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sopxhiea · 3 years

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Alfie Solomons X Reader

Summary: The ropes are tied on both ends after their last meeting and the infamous wild girl keeps tugging at them, until a sliver of vulnerability seeps through and Alfie sees her for who she is.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

“Am I in trouble?”

“You play so hard to get...Will I ever catch you?”

The marble walls are cold. It’s sometime in december, hard to tell since the days seem to be morphing into each other as the clock ticks. The sun no longer shows, and it’s faint when it does. One sound from the large clock on the hallway and it’s the end of the week, the passing of time seems to escape the months.

Although no one seems to care as they dance through the night.

It was put somewhere in the calendar by Annabelle, and you vaguely remember the fading lines of your uncle’s smile as he told you he’d be getting married soon. It was hard to care, even harder to remember why you were standing there, in the corner of the lavish room while the music boomed through the fancy building.

There were many things to be said, but you’d keep them to yourself for the day.

The bride was a sham, you could tell from the way she didn’t even smile at your uncle. He was somewhat of a rich guy, although you hadn’t experienced any of the said money since he happened to be greedy guy who just wouldn’t share what he reclaimed to be his.

Much to your luck, you had no interest in his money or any of his property but the new bride couldn’t disagree more. Annabelle had sent you off an hour before the event started and it was school policy to get in before midnight but you never did, even when it wasn’t someone’s wedding and just a tuesday night.

She’s not supposed to tell anyone of your whereabouts but a little green bill and Annabelle turns into a song bird.

You smile at the guests as they dance, hand in hand as the slow song fills the air. It’s rather strange seeing you like this, some think. You’re usually the source of trouble, the one causing the mess and not the quiet girl you’ve been since the wedding started but you figure you owe your uncle that even though he had forcefully sent you to a boarding school and didn’t send you anything on your birthday.

You don’t hold grudges, you say to yourself.

With the strange passage of time, sometimes you can’t quite pinpoint where the reality starts and the dreams end but you know he’s real. The way he tries to play your little game, where most of the men either failed or simply gave up. He’s been holding up his end, you conclude, after almost a month of spontaneous visits.

Alfie, is his name.

You don’t call him that, although he insists but you enjoy the way his scruff covered face reddens way too much to do things the proper way. You hadn’t even kissed him yet, but he still came back for more. He was easily riled up by you and hated Annabelle and sou you figured, you wouldn’t drop this one.

It was easy, to get tired of men and it happened almost naturally for you. The first stages were far more than exciting, when you didn’t know anything about the bloke’s life or boring job he had but soon after that, reality would set in and you’d realise that the bloke you had your hands on was just another boring rich boy who was too good for you in his family’s eyes.

But not him, Alfie had proved to be quite the opposite.

There was blood on his hands and a weight that came with it, it was evident in the way he walked and spoke, he didn’t just do things out of spite like the young lads did. You didn’t even know how old he was, only that he was close to being twice your age as Ollie had told you one time without giving away too much but that didn’t bother you.

It bothered Annabelle, though. You could see it in her eyes.

Being the infamous wild lady had its perks and one of them was the way you had access to direct information on the town’s social climate. Sometimes it was a bitter, snotty girl telling you her best friend had gotten married to a bloke from Birmingham or the drunk lad you were dancing in the club speaking to you about the new club that was opening soon. It came in many forms but the most important part was that it was the voice of the youth around.

Apparently, Alfie’s gangster nature and piercing eyes had made him an attraction of sorts for the younger ladies. No one would say it except some of the girls you knew who worked in the brothel he had visited many times before. There was a line, the girl had told you under the dim light of the entrance, a line made of posh girls who wanted Alfie to fuck their brains out for the thrill of it.

It had almost made you smile.

You didn’t look down on any of the girls for the thoughts they were having, if anything you agreed but Alfie wasn’t just a bloke who lived around the corner from their posh apartments, you knew. He was in a dangerous line of business and very capable of snapping your neck in two if he wished to. It was thrilling, you would give the girls that, but he would need a lot of warming up to be the consistency you wanted him to be.

And that had been in the works, for the past month.

He was the one who came around, the one to seek you out and that put you in the higher hand when compared to him. You could say no, you wouldn’t but you could and Annabelle would just have to shoo him away with a regretful smile. There were a dozen girls worth half the trouble you were causing him but he liked the trouble, he had signed up for it when he brought you home the first night.

He and you had talked, answering all the questions this time but with a couple white lies here and there. You’d told him about your greedy uncle and about the paintings and he told you about his past and how he came to be the person he was. You’d lied to him when he’d asked you about the number of the guys you’d fucked and you’d amplified and multiplied it. He had just nodded and raised his eyebrows.

He’d lied,too, but you’d caught it.

He lied about before the war and the lost love he had but you saw it in his eyes. He lied about his family when you asked and also about what he did, at least some of the lines of business he was involved in but you didn’t push. He hadn’t shot you after pressing all his buttons and you didn’t have a death wish before solving the puzzle of Alfie Solomons.

You soon find yourself leaning against the exterior wall of the building, on the outside towards the street where there’s no one but you and a couple people walking by. The air is cold but you don’t seem to mind it after borrowing the bride’s fur coat, which she had no idea about as she danced inside. You’d return it when you went back inside but it felt warm against your skin and the material was pleasant.

Alfie thought you looked fucking beautiful.

Annabelle wasn’t supposed to give information about your whereabouts but all he had to was to shoot her an annoyed look and she would tremble under his piercing gaze. Her uncle’s wedding, she had said, she wasn’t so happy about it since the bride is just a little older than she is but she’s gone. Alfie had listened and furrowed his eyebrows before shouting at Ollie to drive to where the wedding was taking place.

And there you were, with rosy cheeks leaning against the cold wall of the building.

He didn’t know why he was there, he didn’t ask himself since he was afraid of the answer. He had felt something similar before, not quite the same but he recalled the pretty lass who’d managed to make his chest feel too tight for his heart.

He wouldn’t say it though, not to himself or anyone else.

He cleared his throat while you kept staring at your shoes. They were new, bought just of the occasion but they were damn uncomfortable so before he could utter a word. he saw you lean down and take the kitten heels off of your feet and step on the cold pavement of the ground. He chuckled in surprise which made you look up, he wondered where all of the hours of etiquette class had gone but he wasn’t complaining.

“Mr. Solomons.” you spoke in a breathy voice, a little less chirpy or seductive compared to usual and he saw it in your eyes too but you were far too quick to cover it all up before he could comment on it.

“‘ello, lass.” he spoke in his usual gruff voice and watched your pretty features scrunch up and stare up at him.

“It seems as though you always end up finding me.” you spoke, genuine suspicion in your voice and you continued with a smirk Alfie knew well. He was glad he had told Ollie to stay put in the car and was the only one to see you beaming up at him. “Are you having me followed?” you chuckled at the end of your sentence and he smiled at your words.

He wasn’t, not intentionally anyway.

If he had been, you would’ve noticed. You snuck out nearly every night from the school and almost never got caught. Annabelle would hear things the next day if she was lucky but you knew the way the city worked, if someone had followed you, you would know.

“What brings you to this hellhole, then?” you spat out and saw the discontent in his eyes before he covered it up.

He was almost as good as you in this game, almost.

“Just lookin’ to see the lass.” he spoke, eyes boring into yours as you stood in front of him, looking up since the man was twice as tall as you.

“Hm.” you nodded, looking at the familiar black car and then him. You knew Ollie was in there watching you and Alfie never just came to see you and leave, he was going to take you someplace like he usually did.

“’t’s not fuckin’ fun in there?” he spoke, signalling the large doors that opened up to where the wedding was taking place.

You smiled first and chuckled while you did so, it wasn’t the usual one but he’d take it. Looking at him through fluttered eyelashes, you spoke in a sweet voice that made him stay up all night dreaming of you.

“It’s not my cup of tea, Mr. Solomons.” you said in a breathy voice and he watched, just looked at you for a while.

“Ya’ wanna get out of ‘ere, lass?” he said, meeting your doubtful eyes which were often filled with nothing but trouble and he found that somewhere in there too but it wasn’t as obvious as the last time he’d seen you.

“Am I in trouble?” you spoke through a wicked smile, one Alfie knew well. Maybe too well for his own good, he thought.

“No, lass..” he spoke with a low grin, you could see the amusement seeping off of him. “You, yeah, are the fuckin’ trouble if ya’ ask me.” he spoke through his teeth and earned a wide smirk from you.

You were that, and both of you knew it.

“Well..”you spoke, clutching tighter to your new aunt’s coat as Alfie watched you through glassy eyes. “It’s a shame I didn’t ask.” you said with a lighter tone and it caused Alfie to chuckle loudly, which only made the corners of your lips twitch up in reaction.

You played the game too well.

“Where are you planning on taking me this time?” you spoke in a sweet voice, he saw you regain your usual attitude slowly after the laugh and he was glad it was coming back. He needed it to come back, even if he wasn’t able to admit that to himself yet.

He just shot you a smile and walked away after that, towards the big car where Ollie had been waiting for a while. You followed him, no questions asked or no feeling of fear in the pit of your stomach.

It took two to play this game and you had the upper hand, you always did.

----

It came as a shock to him.

The yards of soil coated in grass were now getting ready for the sunset. There were a few animals here and there, a horse and a group of cows that were nowhere near where Alfie was standing or the sign he’d told you to shoot. Ollie was left in the factory, Alfie had driven you all the way to the suburbs on his own and you felt like that wasn’t very boss-like but it didn’t matter.

“I know how to shoot.”

Your words echoed in his mind for a second.

You were half his age and size, he was sure you had been home-schooled or whatever the rich kids did. The posh people Alfie knew didn’t let their daughters within a one-mile radius of someone who had the possibility of carrying a gun let alone actually teach them.

“You fuckin’ what?” he spoke, a look of surprise coming over him which only made you smile at his expression in return.

Of course you knew how to shoot.

You were an expert at sneaking out and making trouble but that came at a price. Men liked to look at how pretty you looked while you danced but some wanted to touch as well, that’s when self defence became a priority. You could punch them or kick them in the nuts but some were strong so a pistol worked, or the small knife attached to your bra but you wouldn’t tell Alfie that.

“You really need to get your ears checked.” you said, visibly annoyed since he had done the same exact thing the last time he’d seen you. He scoffed at first and then walked over to you, slowly and you just watched.

You didn’t know who was the lion and who was the prey anymore. Not when you had a knife strapped to your bra and a gun in your hands.

“Where the fuck did ya’ learn how to shoot? A lass your age?” he said and you realised he was talking to himself and not you. You let him mumble away for a few seconds before stepping up and speaking.

“Well, It seems as though I’m old enough for you to come looking for me every damn week so I assume I’m not too young....” you said, still pissed at his comments about your age. He had no problem fucking you with his eyes but brought it up when it had to do with a gun. “...and I learned on my own. For protection.”

He looked at you, from head to toe and nodded as his hands ran through his beard. The sun was slowly setting and the speckles of light caught his skin and beard, illuminating him in a way that you’d only seen in renaissance paintings before. You gulped but composed yourself quickly, you could show no weakness.

“I ain’t comin’ to look for ya’ every fuckin’ week.” he said and you smiled. Out of all the things you had said, he got stuck on the one thing.

“Why is Annabelle giving me so much trouble about your unannounced visits then?” you said, in a heartbeat and he smiled at you, just smiled for a solid second before turning away. You were quick to answer your question since you had found out that Alfie wasn’t a fan of doing that.

“Either she wants to fuck you or is genuinely annoyed.” you spat and he turned in one swift motion, facing you again with the ghost of a smirk you’d seen earlier.

“Eh?” he made a sound of encouragement mixed with confusion. Alfie was used to you being so forward but every now and then, it still caught him off guard.

You nodded as a way to confirm the first assumption and spoke again, you were walking next to him as he slowly moved towards the target he had told you to shoot. You looked too comfortable with a gun in your hand, he thought as he watched your lips move.

“You tell me which one, although I have a pretty good idea.” you spoke through a fit of giggles and he watched your features change under the afternoon light.

He was utterly fucked.

“Ain’t she a fuckin’ old maid?” he voiced his opinion and earned a sweet smile from you. You nodded again, a bit quicker this time and fought a fiddle of giggles before speaking.

“She is.” you licked your lips and spoke as Alfie stared at you under the setting sun.

Your hair was all over the place, cheeks red due to the cold weather and he wanted to kiss your nose, warm you up but the game was still on so he composed himself, settled for the inappropriate dreams he’d been having for the past month since you’d been in his house.

“She’s about your age, I think.” you spat out without looking at him and he made a hurt noise, his way of saying that he was offended but the shocked face turned into a small smirk as he spoke, hand tugging at his beard like it usually was and for a moment, your eyes got stuck on his golden rings.

“I ain’t as old as you fuckin’ think I am, lass.” he spoke and you smiled at him. You knew he was significantly older but neither of you had voiced it before but you didn’t think it mattered. He could be as old as he wanted but he’d still be the only person who was able to keep up with you.

“And I’m not as young as you think I am, Mr. Solomons.” you spoke under your breath, eyes at your shoes as he tucked a strand of hair behind your ear. He wasn’t dangerously close but the warmth of his skin spread through yours.

He waited for a moment, looked at the delicate features of your face as you offered him a gentle smile, contrasting the cold air around. He knew you were older, you just looked younger and it didn’t bother him. If anything, he figured it was perfect since he appeared to be older than he was.

The game was fun, he would admit. Like a breath of fresh air in the dull life he seemed to lead, although you would speak to differ since every act that came from the man was everything but boring. You licked your lips, ready to answer any question thrown your way with a bit of sass you carried around with you. He couldn’t figure you out for the life of him, it drove him mad to think about you yet it seemed to be all he was capable of doing those days.

“Ya’ play so hard to get...Will I ever catch ya’?” he sounded confused, convinced that it would never happen somehow but you would slow down at some point, he just didn’t know it.

Men liked chasing girls dressed in pretty lace and with bright, beaming eyes. You were that girl, had been chased by many but you’d never found it in yourself to stop and look back, none were interesting enough to do that. They wanted superficial things, a fuck or a dance or maybe the thrill of being with a girl every cockney banged on about but there was nothing real in those kind of relationships.

But you figured, since Alfie was proving to be nothing like those men, you’d slow down just a little.

Not now though, but sometime in the future.

“Maybe If your sciatica gets better, you might have a decent shot at it, Mr. Solomons.” you spoke through a beaming smile and the words and the redness on your nose caused Alfie to laugh. He still wanted to kiss you, he realised.

“‘s Alfie, luv.” he reminded for the countless time, but he knew it was useless. He liked the way you said it anyway, much better than anyone he’s heard.

“Sure it is.” you spoke through a half-hearted giggle and started walking towards the car.

He had brought you here to teach you how to shoot but you knew how to do it already, he felt an ease in his gut knowing that. Men around London were dangerous and although he’d speak to differ that you were more lethal than any man he’d seen, a woman could never be too careful. He knew.

He watched you get in the car without the usual help from Ollie, realised something along the way. If he were honest with himself, he had realised it some time ago but he wouldn’t admit to it, took all the fun in his eyes. He smiled at you before looking at the sunset one last time.

The thrill of this would pass but Alfie was sure it would leave a sweet aftertaste. The days were short now, the time washed over the clock like an unexpected tidal wave from a once calm sea. There was a siren calling out to him, enticing him with her words each time she spoke but the siren had no intention of killing him in a cruel way. She was too soft for that, although many saw her as a killer trap.

The siren was you, and you were so beautiful under the sunset as you waved at him from the car.

I might die, he thought. I might die and it would be because of her, he said to himself as he looked at your smile. He soon concluded that he didn’t mind that at all. He would prefer it to the slow bleeding of a knife wound or the quick and efficient house of a bullet in between his blue orbs.

That was how it started, with the handsome sailor ignoring all the warnings.

The amateurs didn’t see the warnings before the siren engulfed them, ate them whole and left no trace. The beginners would be fooled quickly but no, Alfie wasn’t new to this. He knew that the captains went to the sirens on purpose, not because they were fooled but because the siren was a new source of hope in a different world.

And the times had changed.

“Silly girl.” Alfie mumbled to himself after getting into the car. You were sitting quietly next to him, in an unusual manner where you were almost sulking.

You realised, once you sat in the car and gazed out the window to see the now fading orange sky, that until that very point it had always been Alfie who would seek you out. He’d mostly paid you unannounced visits at the school but sometimes, he’d catch you during your weekly shopping trips or even the library. Never during the nights when you’d sneak out to go dancing in the pubs.

Although he knew all about it, you knew the faces of his men by this point. The man who’d follow you in and out of school.

So you decided that it was time for a simple yet revolting change. You’d invite him out this time, in a less more proper manner than he had.

You had it all planned out and he had no idea. You let him drive you to the school, commenting on how boring his old man stories were and he just chuckled and mumbled something under his breath. You let him drop you off, a gentle kiss on your cheek and the cold feel of his rings against your hand as he whispered in your ear, “I’ll see you soon, luv.”. You waved at him as he left.

He had no idea of the hurricane that was about to hit him.

So you got ready, lace all over your body in a sheer dress. You wore your favourite kitten heels and just a simple lip just how Alfie liked it. It was time for a little play, something to tip his interest further. It wasn’t like you’d lost it but men were very easily distracted. So you’d created a masterplan to remedy the problem you thought you had. Your hair was let down, tickling your shoulders as you swayed your hips in the fur coat that had belonged to the new bride in your family but the wedding was long forgotten.

You wouldn’t fuck him, you didn’t think.

Or maybe you would, you said to yourself as you approached his large house. The nerves were near but so was he and you had no intentions of fucking this up. He was an interesting one, one worth keeping and you would make sure of it.

Nine pm. The air cold around your shoulders as a smile graced your lips. You were supposed to be in the tea room, blocks away from where you were standing in front of a stranger’s door.

Well, not so much of a stranger anymore.

One knock, and then another.

His voice filled the other side of the door, a smile graced your lips and you braced yourself for the night, for the look of surprise that would surely be cast on his handsome features.

One inhale, one genuine smile and the swift motion of the door opening.

There he was, your handsome stranger.

And you’d kiss him that night.

-----

Tagging: @clairecrive @parkbearum @sourirez @vetseras @mollybegger-blog @babylooneytoonz @peakascum @fuseburner @r-rose08 @innerpaperexpertcloud

a/n: They will kiss soon and do more stuff :) so stay tuned pls and lemme know if you liked the chapter!! This somehow ended up being a slow-burn type of thing but oh well :)

and happy new year, dear ones! I hope it’s a good year for all!

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masasaty · 3 years

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Get to Know Me

Tagged by@tebarambles (thank you!)

1. Star sign and/or Hogwarts House:

Libra. But that means nothing to me.

Slytherin. As a Jewish person this is problematic, but this is because of the assumption all Slytherins went after Voldemort.

2. Put your Spotify/music app on shuffle. What are the first 4 songs that come up?

Daniel Powter - Bad Day

Olly Murs - Dance With Me Tonight

Suzanne Vega - World Before Columbus

Adele - Send My Love (To Your New Lover)

3. Who is your celebrity crush?

Jemma Redgrave (and Eve Best) dah!

4. What’s a sound you love?

My niece's laugher

5. Do you believe in ghosts?

Yes. got nothing to lose here.

6. How about aliens?

I want to believe we are not alone in this universe, so yes.

7. Favorite place to travel?

Spain. love Spain.

8. Do you tend to hold grudges against people who have done you wrong?

Yes. I tried to think when I did that - two cases come to mind. either someone hurt my family (I don't forgive that, ever!) or someone from my family did me wrong, and this hurt deep and I hold a grudge (like my 17th birthday..)

9. Tag 7 people who should do this: @bramwellbern @the-night-la-nuit @eraisme @agentyorkfoxtrot12

#personal

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bigskydreaming · 4 years

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Apropos of nothing other than fuyunoakegata making me think of it with that last post, I’ve gotten enough new followers lately that its worth a refresher slash introduction on one of my personal pet themes: that of the word ‘broken’ in regards to trauma/abuse/rape victims and survivors.

Again, nothing to do with them for using the word, but rather just an awareness of the many ways the word is used in those contexts in our society, and my personal opinion that a lot of those ways are very limited and could use some expansion beyond how we typically see these things talked about.

So the below excerpt is just one I think sums up my take on it all pretty well, and as such is a cornerstone viewpoint for a lot of the stuff I regularly express and/or circle back to, as well as being the scene I think I’ve probably gotten the most feedback/reactions to over the years out of pretty much anything I’ve written. Its YJ-verse, Dick and Dinah, utilizing the Tarantula storyline and the not-at-all-uncommon baby-in-the-aftermath trope, but stands fairly well on its own and doesn’t require any context or give any spoilers beyond that.

****

In the end, it was Dick who finally broke the newly fallen quiet.

"Does Batman know yet?"

Batman, not Bruce. Dinah shook her head. They're one and the same, she wanted to remind him, wanted to shake him, wanted to scream in Bruce's face every time she'd watch him insist on the distinction over the past ten years.

"He's waiting back at Mt. Justice," she said. "But no, he doesn't know yet. He knows something is wrong, but I convinced him to let me come alone and speak with you first."

Dick snorted. "At least he actually listens to you."

"I think this makes the third time in the fifteen years I've known him," Dinah said wryly. "Don't go thinking I'm special. He only listened because I convinced him barreling in here would only make things worse. And the last thing your father has ever wanted to do is make things worse for you. He manages it sometimes anyway, but it's never his intent."

Not that intent matters, or is any kind of excuse for the harm or damage one actually causes, Dinah reflected. And normally it wasn't a line of thinking she'd ever open a door to at all, but with the past two years worth of tension between Dick and his father still a major source of the young man's turmoil, she figured it was worth it to see if Dick would seize the opportunity to defend Bruce. Lord knows Dick could hold a grudge against his father like no one's business, but anyone else trying it in his presence was usually a nonstarter.

To her disappointment - but not her surprise - Dick ignored the bait and instead just grunted. He stared at the floor, face alternately pale and purple under the neon glow that washed through the window via a strip club's signage across the street.

"I wouldn't have broken, you know," Dick said, never looking up. His lips twisted beneath the words, as if they tasted like something sour. "If he came too. I didn't...I don't want him here, not now, or yet, I mean. But it's not like. It wouldn't have broken me or whatever you're thinking. That's all I mean."

"I didn't say that it would, Dick," Dinah said carefully. But not so carefully as to lay credence to the idea she thought he was fragile. Not an easy line to traverse. Where's a tightrope walker when you need one? Oh, right. Crumpled up on the floor of his unlit apartment, afraid to even look at his own baby. Things were off to a promising start. "It's not either or. You're not broken just because you're not alright and you're not alright just because you're not broken. There's room for space in between."

She sighed and cast around the cramped apartment, dragging a chair from the kitchen table to settle down in front of him. The room was such a far cry from the opulence of Wayne Manor. She knew Dick had never been one to buy into the trappings of his father's wealthy lifestyle. She and Ollie frequently attended the same functions as the Waynes, and she'd smothered many a giggle at Dick and Jason's antics as the two reveled in shocking the Gotham elite with loud and pointed reminders of their impoverished 'low class' backgrounds. Still, looking around, she couldn't help but wondering how much of Dick's apartment and its placement was purely a result of not caring about things like wealth and status, and how much of it was a deliberate rejection of those things, of Bruce? Did it even matter? Or was she just stalling?

"You know, I've never really liked when people use that word," she mused. The baby in her arms stirred restlessly, his nose wrinkling. God. As a general rule, she preferred waiting until children were teenagers before interacting with them. She wasn't big on babies, usually - most people who cooed over their shrunken little faces and called them the most beautiful things they'd ever seen were just lying, in her opinion. But this one was a charmer. Or maybe he wasn't, and she was just already hopelessly attached because Reasons. Crap. Of all the times for a maternal bone to materialize.

"Broken. What does that even mean, really? It's just a description of a physical state, but people often use it like a judgment. As though it describes what someone is, instead of simply what state they're in at a particular moment. You can break something and then put it back together so you can never tell the difference, so what does it mean that it was broken? Why does it matter?"

Dick shifted for the first time since she'd entered the apartment. She might not be Batman caliber, but her own reflexes were nothing to sneeze at. Still, the suddenness of his movements were unexpected enough to catch her offguard as he reached over to the side and snatched up one of the escrima sticks he carried as part of his Nightwing ensemble. A slim but sturdy shaft of polished black wood about a foot long in length, it made a hell of a crack when he held it in both hands and brought it down over one knee, hard and fast enough to snap it in two. He tossed the two broken pieces onto the hardwood floor. One rolled over to rest against her foot.

"Can't fix that with crazy glue."

Dinah smoothed her features into careful non-reaction as she bent and reached down to pick up the broken stick, still cradling the infant in one arm as she rolled the shattered weapon in her other palm.

"No, I suppose not. But I bet you I could find a hundred other uses for this piece right here. Plenty of other things you could do with it, or things you could build with it. Use it as the foundation to make something else entirely, or even just carve it, turn it into a work of art, something beautiful. And whatever you end up with, could you describe it as broken? Yes, it wouldn't be your escrima stick anymore, doesn't do the same thing, have the same purpose, maybe what it was is broken. But what it is? What you make of it? Would that be broken?"

Dick jutted his jaw out, mulish, stubborn. A mirror of the expression she'd last glimpsed under Batman's cowl, not even an hour ago. They couldn't be more alike if they were blood. "I know what you're doing," he said.

"What's that?"

"Exactly what I should have known you'd do before I told Artemis she could send Wally to get you. Knew it was a mistake the second he left. I don't need a shrink right now, Canary."

She shrugged. "Good, because I'm done trying to be your therapist. I realized what a waste it was, on my way over here. I never caught a whiff of this brewing under your surface this past year, so obviously our sessions have just been a waste of both our time. I forgot that arrogant smart people make the worst patients."

That was enough to jolt a noticeable reaction out of him. Finally. It was a calculated gamble, one she already regretted as a swift flicker of hurt winged across his face, half-glimpsed and vanished as quickly as it came. It was a little harder for him to banish his gaping mouth. "Yeah, not your usual session starter," he agreed, in only the barest facsimile of his usual clever humor. But it was a start. "So I'm arrogant, now?"

"You always have been," Dinah said gently, trying to soften the blow of her harsh words. She quirked her lips in a half smile. "Just like your father. Difference is, you actually bother with social interaction and you're charming, so you can get away with it where he can't. And Dick...I'm not saying it as an insult. Or that it's a bad thing. I think you and Bruce are arrogant in certain ways, yes. I think you have to be. To do what you both do."

"You're both human, no superpowers, no magic, not even advanced technology giving you an edge. And yet you not only hold your own amidst heroes who have all those advantages and more, you take charge. You lead. You inspire. Mere confidence isn't enough to allow you to do that. You need something that goes beyond that, something that can only be called arrogance, because it's such a bone deep certainty that you can do all the things you profess you can do, that you are the right people to fight the battles you fight, that it's above questioning. There are a million and one reasons you both shouldn't be able to do the things you both do, and if there was even a second you doubted that you could, you probably wouldn't be able to. When you leap off ten story buildings with just a grapple line and your acrobatics to bring you safely to the ground, it's because you believe, no, you know, that you can defy gravity. Even though for seven billion other humans, gravity can't be defied. Dick, I'm an Olympic level gymnast. You don't see me leaping off ten story buildings if I can help it because I know I'm good, yes, but that doesn't mean I know in a battle of me vs gravity, I'm always going to win. You do. You know that. You believe that. And that is arrogance, yes. But it also happens to be justified, in your case."

He mulled that over, not looking thrilled, but at least looking engaged now, and she breathed a bit easier. Good. Engaged she could work with. It was a start. "Okay. Fine. So what about that makes me a terrible patient?"

"I never said terrible," she protested lightly. "I said the worst."

He glared.

She relented. "It's like Superman's invulnerability. Most of the time, that's exactly what he needs to keep him safe. It's all he needs. But in some specific, rare instances, even if it's only 1% of the time, the very thing that makes him so hard to hurt, makes him hard to help. All it takes is that one bullet that can pierce his skin, either because it's Kryptonite, or it's enchanted, or something else....and suddenly, that same invulnerability that keeps him safe 99% of the time is the very thing making it so hard to operate on him, to cut into him and dig out the one bullet that made it past his defenses. Dick, answer me this. What's the first thing you do when you're confronted with a problem?"

"I assess the situation and determine a course of action, I guess," he frowned. "Why?"

"Because when the problem is you, when it's something that's happened to you or something involving your behavior, the kinds of things that a therapist is meant to help you with, you do exactly that. You assess the situation, you assess yourself, your own behavior, and you come to a conclusion. Which means by the time you ever arrive at my doorstep for a session, you've already diagnosed yourself. You've made up your mind. That arrogance that gives you the strength, the certainty, the conviction you need to tackle every other obstacle you face without hesitation, it has you equally convinced that the conclusion you've already drawn about what's wrong with you or your behavior, it must be true. That you've got it already figured out. And so instead of our sessions being about me helping to guide you to a conclusion or helping you find the inconsistencies in your own logic or reasoning - that's not what you're actually there for. Because you're sure you already have the answer, and so instead of looking for it, you're really just looking for it to be validated."

She gave him a moment to absorb that, drawing a breath before continuing.

"And here's where you being so damn smart becomes a problem - because you're brilliant, Dick, just like Bruce is, you know how to read people, you know how to manipulate people, you can do it without even having to think about it. And so instead of telling me what you need to say, you tell me what you think I want to hear. And we get further and further away from actually helping you as you steer our sessions towards the conclusions you've made because of what's bothering you....instead of towards the conclusions you'd draw if you were ready to face it."

Dick leaped to his feet, face flushed in the moonlight. He stepped forward, aborted that when it drew him closer to her and the baby, features twisting in a heart-wrenching moment of agony for the briefest instant before he stepped away again. Carefully breathing in, making a visible effort to drop his voice despite his obvious agitation. Good. Awareness of his surroundings. Thinking beyond the moment to consequences of each action. Engaging more and more with his surroundings. She'd piss him off to Hell and back if that's what it took. Be angry, Dick. Rage. Scream. Yell. Hurt.

"So what?" He asked with a sharp, acidic laugh. He paced, arms buried in his armpits, hunched over, eyes on his boots as he wandered in circles. Pent up, restless energy. All the frenetic motion of Robin, of Nightwing, of a bird made for flying yet still stuck on the ground.

"You think I don't know what's bothering me? You think...I freak out a little and Wally runs to you and tells you something and you come back and find me all freaked out on the floor and you've got it all figured out from there, from just that, but you think I can't figure it out on my own? I'm brilliant, you said, but you think I'm all messed up because I can't face it, I can't see it even when its right in front of me?"

"That's not what I'm saying Dick," Dinah tried, but he just laughed again. Jabbed a hand towards the baby in her arms, took it back halfway.

"I know what happened, Canary," he bit out. "I was there. I don't need you to hold my hand and walk me through it so I can face it. Yeah, okay, I get it. I was raped. Tarantula raped me. I can say it. I'm not - I'm not in denial. I've been doing this since I was ten, I'm not...I know the statistics, I know it's not any different just because I'm a guy. I get that men can get raped, that they can be raped by women, that there's no other word for what happened to me. That it wasn't my fault, that I was in shock, that I can't be blamed for her taking advantage of me in that state. I know all that okay? It's not a fucking revelation to me, I don't need anyone's help to fucking face that!"

"Then what's the problem, Dick?" Dinah asked softly when he ran out of steam, or breath or both. His hair was wild in disarray, his stance a contradiction of defensiveness and a pending attack. His chest heaved like a bellows even though he'd yet to raise his voice past a low-pitched hiss. "If you know all that already, where's the problem? What are you having trouble with here? What reason does someone who's already faced all that have for hiding it from his friends and family for a year?"

"There's no problem, that's my whole point," Dick insisted, throwing his arms wide. "Fine, I freaked out for a minute because I just found out my rapist had my fucking baby, and I thought it was over and done with but....jesus. I'm not...it's not because I can't deal with what happened. God, nothing even happened! It was barely anything. I barely even remember it I was so out of it, and then it was over. She didn't hurt me, its not like it was painful or I was drugged or it left me damaged or something, okay? I told you, I've been doing this for ten years. I've SEEN victims okay, real victims, women and even men who are so fucking traumatized by what some sicko did to them they can barely get out of bed in the morning. I've seen victims left beaten and bloody by their attackers, who've...it was nothing like that, okay?"

Dinah nodded. "And that. That right there. That's exactly what I'm talking about."

Dick blinked and rocked back on his heels. Blindsided by her calm and her seeming non sequitur. "What do you mean?"

"I mean you misdiagnosed," she said with a helpless shrug. "You've been so busy reacting to what you thought was your problem, what you were convinced must be bothering you - whether or not you were able to admit that you were raped, that you could be raped even though you're a man, let alone an accomplished fighter able to protect himself - that you left yourself wide open to something else entirely. Tell me. What do you know about Impostor Syndrome?"

"It's a term sometimes used to describe over-achievers who have trouble internalizing their accomplishments. Perfectionists who think they're frauds because they don't know how to take credit for their own achievements and say its because of luck or timing or something other people did," Dick frowned, puzzling through both the question and the aim of it. He raised an eyebrow. "Doesn't sound like something that applies to someone as arrogant as me."

"Don't be a little shit, Dick," Dinah said with small smirk. "And you're right, I don't think any of that applies to you. However, it's also used in another capacity, to describe trauma survivors who are unable to internalize their own trauma. Who deflect from it, or mitigate it, treat it as less than it is on the basis that it wasn't as bad as what's happened to someone else. It's especially common in trauma survivors who are noted for being especially empathetic or who have caregiver personality types. People who are so used to self-identifying as someone whose role or purpose is in helping others, that they find themselves unable to identify as traumatized because it might shift the focus to themselves instead of people they feel need it more. Does that behavior sound a little more familiar?"

Dick hesitated, eyes on the floor and darting every which way as though looking for escape from a trap.

"It should," she pressed on. "Considering you've been doing that for a long time, much longer than just this past year. Pretty much as long as I've known you, in fact."

"What are you talking about?"

"What do you do whenever someone brings up your parents or their deaths?" Dinah asked softly. He flinched. Ducked his head to the side. Jaw tightened again. "You say it was a long time ago. Or that at least you have Bruce now. Or that you wish other orphaned kids could be as lucky as you ended up. Always shying away from the idea that you might need sympathy or comfort because of what happened to your parents and pointing instead to everyone else who needs it more. And it only got worse when Bruce adopted Jason."

"Don't -" Dick warned. His head snapped back up, fire in his eyes, but she refused to be deterred. Not when she finally had his full attention.

"You never allowed anyone to dwell on any of your myriad traumas once Jason came along. Not just your parents, but what happened with Two-Face, the first time you faced the Joker, nothing. You'd always deflect, always shift things back around to Jason. And what a hard life he'd had. So much harder than you, you insisted. At least your parents loved you. At least they didn't abuse you like Jason's father abused him, or were a drug addict like his mother was. Someone mentioned the time you spent in a juvenile detention center as an eight year old, all because some racist bitch of a social worker didn't like that you were Romani, and your response was that at least you didn't have to live on the streets like Jason did before he met Bruce."

"This has nothing to do with Jason!" Dick ground out, heated.

"It's not about Jason, Dick. It's about you. Because your brother had a hard life, yes. It's true. He suffered terrible traumas before Bruce found him and adopted him. And not a single one of those things are made less true, or invalidated or in any way threatened just because terrible things happened to you too. So why do you insist your pain was less than his? That yours didn't matter just because his existed?"

"It's not the same thing," Dick insisted stubbornly. "You can't compare what happened to my parents to the twelve years of shit Jason had to live through."

"I'm not though, Dick. You are. You're the only one saying one must be worse than the other. All I'm saying is both existed."

She sighed. "Trauma isn't a scale to be measured on. It doesn't require a minimum threshold, and it doesn't have a ranking order. It's not about how much harm was caused or how much damage someone did, because at the end of the day, trauma is transformation."

"What do you mean?"

Dinah held up his broken escrima stick, still cradled in her hand. "Trauma is force that causes change. It's not about the act of damaging. It's about what's left behind once the damage is done. I could break this stick into two pieces. It would take a certain amount of force, a certain amount of damage. And once that was done, we'd be left with two pieces here instead of this one. But then give me another stick the same size, same dimensions, only this one is made of metal. I could break that in two as well. But it would require a whole different kind of force, a whole different order of damage. But in the end, once it was done, we'd still be left with two pieces of that too, instead of the one we started with."

"Two different sticks,” Dinah continued. “Two different traumas. Two different applications of force. And the only thing in common is in the end....both sticks would be transformed. Neither would be what they were originally. Not less. Not more. But different. Changed by the trauma they endured. You want to quantify that trauma? You probably could. It'd be arbitrary, but you could do it. You could calculate the force used, define parameters for the damage it caused. But what would that mean? What's the outcome? What happens because you decided one trauma was greater than the other? How does that alter the fact, the reality, that in the end, the survivors of those two different traumas are changed? Something different from what they started as?"

"But it is different," Dick insisted. He looked confused though, rather than forceful. "Context matters. The situations matter."

"Yes, they do," Dinah agreed. "But it's a question of focus, not degree. Which trauma was worse only really matters when you're focused on the trauma. When you're looking at what the trauma leaves behind though? When you focus on the survivors? All that really matters is...how are they different? How were they changed?"

"Dick, you only started getting angry and frustrated when you compared what you went through to what other rape victims you've seen over the years have gone through. What they went through is terrible, yes. It doesn't mean what happened to you wasn't terrible as well. You said you weren't hurt, it wasn't painful, she didn't damage you physically. That doesn't matter though. Because rape isn't about any of those things. It's not about pain, it's not about how much it hurt. Rape is about theft."

He flinched at that, taking a step back.

"Rape is theft,” Dinah pressed forward. “It's betrayal. It's someone taking something they have no right to, something precious, something that can't be taken back. It's taking away someone's right to choose who they share their body with, its using someone's body against them, against their wishes. That's what Tarantula did to you. Whether it hurt or not, whether you remember it fuzzily or in full detail...she took something from you, something you can't get back, and in doing so, she changed you forever."

He shook his head, eyes back on the ground. Denial but not denial. Acceptance but not acceptance. She forged on.

"And the thing is, you're right. You haven't been in denial about what happened. You know that she raped you, that that's what it is. What you haven't faced though is that it's not about how much that hurt you. It's about how much it changed you. Because you're different now, aren't you? And you're smart enough that you figured that out as soon as it happened, that you're not the same anymore, because I'm willing to bet everything looks different to you now. Because you lost something you didn't even know you could lose until it was gone. A sense of security you took for granted, that something like this could never happen to you, except now you know that it can, and it did. We're all made up of our experiences and your experiences now include something they didn't before, something big, something that left a sizable impact, and the be all and end of it all is that you've changed, and you know that....and you keep looking for an answer as to why. Why is everything so different now? Why are you so different?”

She sighed softly.

“And the problem is the only answer you have for that, you decided wasn't good enough for you. Because it wasn't as bad as it could have been. As bad as what happened to other people. And so you've trapped yourself because you know something's different but the thing that caused it, the thing that changed you....it wasn't big enough to explain this change, you decided. You didn't suffer enough, it didn't hurt enough, and so it's not a good enough reason for you to not be who you used to be. And so you keep finding the flaw in yourself, deciding that it must be that you're weak, that everything unsettling you, upsetting you, it's not because what Tarantula did warrants those changes, it's because you can't cut it. That's what you've been telling yourself, haven't you? You're not a survivor, because you don't think there was anything for you to survive. You're not traumatized because the trauma doesn't count. You didn't suffer enough, so that can't excuse all the turmoil you feel."

Dick paced restlessly, all that frenetic energy he always carried with him ratcheted up in intensity until Dinah was half convinced he was going to shake himself to pieces if he didn't find an outlet soon. Unfortunately, she wasn't quite ready to stop.

"All those other victims you described seeing over the years. When you helped them, did you tell them you were sorry for what they went through?"

Dick paused and raised haggard eyes. "Of course I did. Why?"

"Why did you?" Dinah asked, arching a brow. "You didn't do anything to them. You weren't apologizing for something you caused. So what did it mean, to tell them you were sorry?"

"I don't know. It's just...it's what you do. It's a comfort."

"Why though? What about it makes it a comfort?"

"I don't know, it just is. It lets them know somebody cares, I guess," Dick raged. "What are you getting at? You have all the answers, you tell me!"

"Think it through, Dick," Dinah said, firm. "They don't know you. You're a stranger to them. What does it mean for a stranger to tell a victim they're sorry, that they care. What does it matter? What does it do for them?"

Dick stared at her. His face wide and open and searching as he hunted for answers in the shadows of his room, of his own mind. He looked like he'd run a marathon, his body limp and exhausted seeming, like he was only remaining upright by the barest of threads.

"When I tell someone I'm sorry for what happened to them. I don't know. It tells them I see them, I guess," he said hesitantly. She nodded, encouraging him to go on. "That I see what they've been through. That I'm sorry they went through it."

He focused his eyes on hers, with a little more clarity this time. "I tell them...they survived, I guess. That what happened to them...it didn't just happen, it wasn't supposed to happen. But it did. It mattered. What happened to them mattered."

"Yes," Dinah agreed softly. "And every victim you've ever helped, as Robin or as Nightwing, every survivor you've told 'I'm sorry this happened to you' - every time one of them looks in the mirror and recognizes that they aren't the person they were before it happened, that they've changed...they can hold on to that memory of you saying you're sorry. And they know. It happened. It mattered. It is the reason they're different. It is the reason they changed."

Dinah hesitated, and then she said: "I'm sorry it happened to you, Dick. I'm sorry it changed you. I'm sorry that you can't go back to the way things were. I can't tell you it will get better with time. You aren't injured. This isn't a wound that will scar over if you just leave it alone long enough. You can't heal a transformation. But you can decide what you change into. You can decide who you become, even if its not what you were. It'll still be you. A whole you. A complete you. Just a different you. Just like you became someone different after your parents died. I never knew you before that changed you. But that didn't make the you I met any less worth knowing."

He sobbed. Just once, like it was ripped out of him. A tangled, tormented wreck of a sound, his face contorted in a rictus of misery beneath eyes that glistened with a watery sheen, reflecting the wan illumination. It was all he allowed himself, before he found his usual iron control and slammed the gates shut, expression going blank, but it was enough. It was a beginning.

#rape tw

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norbaum · 3 years

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but when you 𝘵𝘪𝘭𝘵 the light i 𝑅𝐸𝒜𝐿𝐼𝒵𝐸...

𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐑𝐎𝐃𝐔𝐂𝐈𝐍𝐆:

✧ ( jack gilinsky + 21 + cis male + he/him ) — did you see 𝐍𝐎𝐑𝐖𝐀𝐘 ‘𝐍𝐎𝐑’ 𝐁𝐀𝐔𝐌 walking down 3rd ? rumor has it they are a 𝐁𝐀𝐊𝐄𝐑 @ 𝐒𝐔𝐍𝐑𝐈𝐒𝐄 & 𝐀 𝐒𝐓𝐔𝐃𝐄𝐍𝐓 and have lived in 𝟐𝟐𝟑 e 66th st 𝐀𝐏𝐓 𝟒𝟎𝟏 for 𝐀 𝐘𝐄𝐀𝐑 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐀 𝐇𝐀𝐋𝐅. i’d describe them as ( 𝙜𝙤𝙤𝙙-𝙝𝙚𝙖𝙧𝙩𝙚𝙙 ) but ( 𝙜𝙪𝙡𝙡𝙞𝙗𝙡𝙚 ), and when they pass by i’m always reminded of 𝐒𝐓𝐑𝐎𝐍𝐆 𝐇𝐀𝐍𝐃𝐒 𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐀𝐃𝐘𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐒𝐎𝐌𝐄𝐎𝐍𝐄 𝐎𝐍 𝐀𝐍 𝐈𝐂𝐄 𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐊, 𝐀 𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐌 𝐋𝐀𝐔𝐆𝐇 𝐋𝐈𝐊𝐄 𝐂𝐎𝐎𝐊𝐈𝐄𝐒 𝐂𝐎𝐌𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐎𝐔𝐓 𝐎𝐅 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐎𝐕𝐄𝐍, & 𝐀 𝐅𝐀𝐃𝐄𝐃 𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐍𝐎𝐔𝐓 𝐇𝐎𝐎𝐃𝐈𝐄 𝐈𝐍 𝟏𝟎 𝐃𝐄𝐆𝐑𝐄𝐄 𝐖𝐄𝐀𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑. ( ollie, 22, they/them, est )

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐇𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐋𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓𝐒:

one half ( the younger ) of the baum twins — the self-proclaimed christmas tree twins but really, it’s their parents’ fault ; works the first shift at the sunrise baking the bulk of goods for the day && has a love for baking in general ; a senior at NYU studying an individualized track of architecture ; a kind soul who genuinely means well even if he misses the point a bit ( read : a himbo ).

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐑𝐘:

— norway baum was born in a buffalo, new york hospital two minutes and forty-three seconds after his sister fir baum, and unlike his sister, did not scream upon his arrival into the world. it snowed on that december night, CHRISTMAS EVE, an irrelevant fact considering the baums, jewish in heritage, did not celebrate. their parents knew quite in advance that their family would be increasing by two, so it’s anyone’s guess why instead of picking nice normal names for their children they settled on ( as the twins would realize as they got older ) two versions of what amounted to christmas tree.

— nor supposes he ought to be thankful they didn’t name him spruce, because at least norway ( despite also being a country ) could be shortened to a mildly acceptable nickname. instead they graciously made that his middle name leaving every time he gets carded to be an adventure in dubious looks as someone read “norway spruce baum” across the shiny plastic.

— the twins’ entrance into the world would remain a blueprint for most of their lives, fir — the feral child, nor — the calmer but dumber one ; though unlike predicted, they did not balance each other out ( at least in the sense that their parents hoped ). instead it was excruciatingly obvious from the moment they were capable of semi-complex thought that they would be absolute hellions together.

— they grew as thick as thieves as they got older, outgrowing the hellion age soon enough, but only to enter the scheming menaces phase that some may argue they still haven’t left. there were times they had their differences, sure, but in the end they never amounted more to a ripple in the ocean, quickly forgiven and on to the next grand thing.

— they were raised very comfortably in a large house some might consider a mansion ( a modest one at that ), having been privileged enough to be born into the lower upper class. the baums were a rather practical family all the same, in spite of the big house and healthy number of zeros in their bank account, raising their children to be humble, polite, and hardworking : for the most part succeeding ( hardworking might be a matter of perspective ).

— for high school, they attended the local prestigious private co-ed school, nichols ; nor apparently not quite as dumb as everyone seemed to think considering his passing of the entrance exams and decent grades to back that up. nor graduated from nichols ranked surprisingly well, thanks to apparent natural abilities in math and physics.

— college was a toss up, but the choice quickly become a no-brainer when fir was also accepted into NYU. move-in day was a flurry of excitement, most notably the first time the twins would be living ( somewhat ) apart in different dorms thanks to random housing placement and a no co-ed room policy. that excitement lasted about six days for nor, when he became frustrated with the fact that his new roommate, though by almost all accounts PLEASANT, could not seemingly read his mind.

— several other factors, one of which was definitely not separation anxiety, lead them to room together with a few of their mutual friends their sophomore year, and then seek an apartment together the summer before their junior year.

— the 66th st hadn’t really been somewhere nor had frequented, though the neighborhood was known to be affordable and good for students seeking reasonably priced apartments. besides, the apartments were nice, not such a bad commute from school, and they both needed jobs if they wanted to continue to continue to have fun : for though their parents’ generosity extended to both their tuition and rent, it did not extend to spending money.

— in spite of their chaotic energy, they somehow landed one of the apartments on the block and moved in the beginning of august before their junior year ( august 2019 ).

𝐌𝐈𝐒𝐂:

— nor is one of the bakers at sunrise on weekdays and saturdays, likely with the 4 am shift that makes the bulk of the baked goods for the morning rush. he also helps with the counter if needed when the shop opens. he’s kicking down the door of 401 a little after 9 am on weekdays just in time to bring fir breakfast and go to class, and noon on weekends. he’d always been a bit of an early riser ( though 4 am isn’t really an acceptable time for anyone, it’s something he’s grown accustomed to ), and luckily functions well on just five hours of sleep or so. he is prone to taking about an hour and a half nap in the afternoons, though. he does enjoy his work, especially walking through the near abandoned corner at the wee hours of morning.

— at NYU nor studies an individualized track in architecture through the gallatin school of individualized study ; his track combines studies in architecture with structural classes in the tandon school of engineering so he can better understand practicality and the importance of structural-based architecture.

— has played hockey since he was quite young and the baums were looking for some way to burn off his energy. a sports town like buffalo it was a pretty obvious choice. he played up through high school, until an injury and two surgeries near the end of his junior year pretty much put an end to any serious athletic scholarships to a hockey school. he still played his senior year, but was advised against the rigors of college hockey. it was also in this time that he discovered his love of baking. he has played for fun nearby on one of the beer league teams the past couple years.

— as mentioned above, he really started to get into baking end of his junior year and senior year when he was either in recovery or benched a lot and wanted to contribute something. he bonded with one of his grandmothers over this time and he definitely loves making her recipes even now !! he’s also definitely the type to make baked goods for the neighbors. he started out beginning of last season at sunrise just doing regular cashier stuff but in a pinch when they were running low on something popular and they didn’t have any bakers on hand he was able to whip up a batch and saved the day and after that his manager asked him if he wanted to be one of the bakers.

— of the two of them, nor is the one more likely to cook, but they probably still rely a bit too heavily on ordering take out ( they are trying their best ).

— nor is quite neat, but more due to the fact he doesn’t own very much for things to get messy.

— has plants in his room and absolutely talks to them

— probably falls asleep while rewatching episodes of the great british bakeoff every night.

— sings in the shower and hums or sings quietly under his breath when he bakes. he’s really not that bad but he definitely lacks the creativity to do songwriting or talent to play an instrument so don’t ask.

— fir and nor have successfully gone to each other’s classes before despite being fraternal, most notably the longest gambit they ran sophomore year of high school where nor went to fir’s math class and she went to his history class and they kept it up until parent-teacher conferences in october ( something they had forgotten to take into consideration ) and their scheme was then exposed and they were subsequently grounded.

— he’s not straight and very much just loves who he loves. that being said, his tendency to look past people’s flaws and hand out second chances has gotten his heart broken a few times and has resulted in fir taking to examining anyone he shows the vaguest interest in under a microscope ( and possibly taken to interrogation ).

— fir and nor co-run the most chaotic tik tok @xmastreez. it has no real purpose or direction and mostly consists of capturing random shenanigans of each other, themselves, or random people. they have a modest following.

𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐘:

— put bluntly, nor is a rather kind and gentle soul ; he tends to want to see the best in people and that leads to him coming across rather naive. that may be true in a sense, but it’s less due to ignorance and more that he hasn’t let any hardship or heartbreak get in the way of his worldview. the exception to this is of course anyone who has hurt fir ; you will then learn that he’s very good at holding grudges too.

— nor isn’t someone to worry about the future very much. there was a point early in high school when he did, but after the injury his junior year, he took on a very one week, one day at a time sort of mentality. he is quite happy to live in the moment for now.

— he’s a hard worker, but only when it comes to things that he likes or wants to learn. he’ll put 100% into anything he deems worthy : his baking, hockey, certain classes of study, but try to get him to read something he doesn’t want to or learn something he dislikes and he will become the biggest slacker you have ever seen.

— he and fir bounce well off each other and though nor may be the more responsible one, it’s clear that fir is more of the leader of the two and that his resolve when it comes to his sister’s absurd ideas is not very strong. that being said he can be very protective of fir ( though not overbearingly so ), in a way that can be seen as quite endearing.

— nor is smart, but only in the context of his classwork. outside the classroom or the bakery, and especially in day-to-day interactions, nor just seems to be lacking a certain brand of common sense.

— honestly he’s a fucking himbo. need i say more.

𝐀𝐏𝐏𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐀𝐍𝐂𝐄:

— 5′11″ ( one inch taller than fir, a fact hotly contested between them and many times a moot point considering she likes to wear heels ), rather fit thanks to keeping up hockey as a hobby.

— brown eyes, skin that tends to always look a little sunkissed even in the middle of winter, dark brown hair that fluctuates in length, sometimes a bit short, usually a bit longer so that it starts to curl slightly.

— style : he likes black skinny jeans or semi-fitted army green pants that probably get covered in flour too quickly but he wears them to work anyway, and fitted t-shirts in any color. he’s a fan of hoodies, cycling through an old nichols hockey one, an adidas branded one, and a newer nyu sweatshirt he got when he committed to the university. he considers hoodies adequate enough for most of the winter, and hey he’s never really gotten sick from walking to class in just that so why change ?? though he may on occasion throw on a denim jacket over a hoodie. he wears practical boots when it isn’t too hot ( unlike his sister ). — ref: yes, yes, and yes

— jewelry : nor’s not one for accessories, limited to a couple simple silver necklaces and an analogue watch with a brown leather band that probably takes him a little too long to read.

— scars, tattoos, etc : no tattoos ; a small well-healed scar over his left cheekbone from a hockey accident ( near invisible and most people don’t know it’s there unless they’re close or looking ), several other small scars on his legs and hands that he can’t recall what they’re from ; small birthmark on the outside of his right thigh.

𝐖𝐀𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐃 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐍𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒:

🎵i wanna ~𝘷𝘪𝘣𝘦~ with somebody🎵 🎵feel the ᶜʰᵉᵐ with someboᵈʸʸʸʸʸʸ🎵

𝐎𝐎𝐂:

hello everyone !! i’m ollie ( 22, est, they/them pronouns ) one of your admins. i am pretty much always on discord so hmu there pls, thank you so much for joining 66th, and i can’t wait to vibe w you all !!!!

#66th.intro

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howlingmolly · 3 years

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ϟ. → Christina Hendricks : Female : She/Her : social worker : back to the wall by the divinyls ϟ did you see Molly Weasley ? you know , 47 year old pureblood who Gryffindor . some say Molly can be quite supportive but are known to be hot tempered. they are aligned with the order . maybe that’s why they remind me of sex in the morning, coffee, Stevie Nicks. ϟ

GENERAL

Name: margaret olivia prewett-weasley Nicknames: molly Age: 47 Place of birth: birmingham Spoken languages: english Sexual orientation: bi Occupation: social worker/stay at home mum

APPEARANCE

Eye color: cinnamon brown Hair color: fiery red Height: 5′2 Scars: c-section scar. percy’s birth had been particularly hard. contrary to what the muggle world had said at the time of when she had her c-section, however, she was then able to give birth naturally to her other children. Piercings: earlobes and conch Tattoos: none

FAMILY

Sibling(s): twin brothers Parents: isabella and carl prewett Relationship with Family: she was close to all of her immediate family members. she was really close to her mother until she went back to work after her father lost his job. she then became increasingly closer to her father until she hit puberty and became close again with her mother. up until they died, she was super close to both. the same goes with her brothers, she was close with them until their death. Spouse/Significant Other: arthur weasley Children: bill, charlie, percy, fred, george, ron ginny, harry, hermione, fleur Pets: a chicken, princess lay-a

MAGICAL

Wand: 12.5″, Surprisingly Swishy, Cedar, Dragon Hair First Spell: scourgify. living with a set of twin brothers, she couldn’t stand the sight of a mess and to this day, it’s still one of her most used spells Favourite Spell: the spell to determine if one is pregnant. it brings back a lot of nostalgia for her and while it’s not useful for her and hasn’t been for years, it’s a sentimental one and it brings back a lot of memories First Magical Experience: fabian’s pacifier levitated away from him when he started to cry too much right after her parents brought the twins home. Patronus (if they have one): an elephant If they were a Magical Creature what would they be: a dragon

HAVE THEY

Had sex in public: yes Had a broken heart: the first relationship molly was in ended badly and it’s the only one that didn’t end amicably. her other relationships left her hurt, yes, but not quite like after her first relationship ended. Been in love: yes Cheated: never Stayed up for more than 24 hours: does she need to mention she has seven kids? Broken a bone: a few toes tripping over her kid’s toy Bullied someone: no Been fired: no Got into a physical fight: yes, with her brothers Got any grudges against anyone? more than she likes to admit A dark secret: no

ARE THEY

A virgin: she has seven kids A cuddler: yes. almost too much of a cuddler A kisser: yes A smoker: not often, but she’ll have a cigarette socially Scared easily: she startles easily, yes. her family, though, is the only thing that she truly becomes scared easily about Jealous easily: no Trustworthy: yes Dominant: yes Submissive: if the situation calls for it, but it’s not easy for her Forgiving: she hates to admit it, but she holds grudges very easily Single: very much not so

RANDOM QUESTIONS

Have they wanted to kill someone: yes Have they actually killed someone: yes, but not with a lot of ptsd and guilt associated with it Have they ridden a beast: yes, with charlie on a dragon Do they prefer private or public praise after helpings others: private. she doesn’t do things to get praise What keeps them up at night: worrying about her family Guilty Pleasures: breakfast in bed Last time they cried: when she walked down the baby aisle and looked at the little onsies What event would you choose death over living through: another rough childbirth. she can’t bring herself to even think about losing another child like she did with fred If they died today would they be happy with the life they’ve lived: always

#about. molly.#cruciatus.intro #tw: miscarriage

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writingsofawonderer · 5 years

Text

Rivalry — Part 2

Word Count: 2.5K

Warnings: Strong language.

Masterlist

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5

Olivia was gone long before Calum woke up the next morning. He wasn’t at all surprised, but there was a part of him that wished, just once, she would stay. He hadn’t planned on developing feelings for the twin sister of the person he hated most in the world. Sure, he’d wanted her since the very first time he saw her, but he’d thought that it was purely lust. Of course, he never thought that he’d act on it in the first place, so he shouldn’t have been surprised that things didn’t go as he planned.

He was pulling his shirt on as he came down the staircase, not caring if anyone saw the scratches on his back or the hickeys on his neck and chest. Ashton was already in the kitchen, cooking breakfast, when Calum entered. Ashton was one of Calum’s closest friends. He even knew that Calum had feelings for someone that he was sleeping with. Calum hadn’t told him that it was Olivia, though; the only person who knew that was his best friend, Luke. He wasn’t surprised that as soon as Ashton saw him, he could tell that he was in a mood. “What’d she do this time?”

“Nothing new.” Calum huffed, grabbing a mug and the coffee pot. “I just hate falling asleep with her in my arms and waking up with her gone.”

“Have you told her that yet?”

Calum gave Ashton an exasperated look. “You know I can’t. She barely wants to talk to me as things are. I swear she’s only in it for the sex.”

He heard a chuckle behind him before a new voice said, “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“Not everyone is afraid of human connection, Mike.” Ashton defended. “Cal, I’m sure it won’t go as badly as you think it will. At least try, yeah?”

Calum nodded but didn’t reply. He could already guess what would happen if he tried to tell Olivia how he was feeling. She would probably reject him and never speak to him again, which he really didn’t want to happen. He figured being with her at all was better than scaring her away.

A few hours later, he and his teammates were at the stadium, where he knew he would see her again. As they walked onto the field to begin warming up, he couldn’t stop his eyes from flickering to the stands, right to where Olivia was sitting with her parents and younger sister. He tried not to scowl at the jersey that she was wearing the, opposing team’s colors clear for everyone to see.

He should have been used to it. After all, she’d been wearing those colors long before they started hooking up. At that point, though, he wasn’t sure that he’d ever get used to it. Sometimes he imagined looking up and seeing her wearing his colors, his last name on the back of her shirt instead of her brother’s, cheering for him instead of Oliver.

His attention shifted to the man in question. The bane of his fucking exsistence. If not for Oliver, he doubted Olivia would have a problem with being seen around Calum in public. They might even have been officially dating by then if not for fucking Oliver.

Calum honestly wasn’t even sure why they hated each other so much. Oliver had some unknown grudge against Calum, and eventually the constant jabs and cocky remarks had pissed Calum off enough that it had turned into a full on rivalry.

It was pretty clear to everyone that the tension had gotten worse between the two in the past month. Calum had been getting increasingly frustrated about his feelings for Olivia and the person who stood in his way, and he’d absolutely been taking it out on him on the field and over social media.

The game was pretty brutal. Both Calum and Oliver playing at their best, trying to outdo the other. Calum’s gaze flickered to the girl in the crowd whenever it could. Every once in a while, he would catch her already looking at him, a small smirk on her lips. When his team won, he had hoped to see her standing, cheering for him, but she wasn’t. When he looked at her, there was only a trace of a smile on her lips, and it quickly vanished as her mother turned to tell her something.

He huffed and turned back to his team. The win probably would’ve taken his mind off of her if not for the person who approached him just then. “Hood.”

He looked at Michael and rolled his eyes before turning to face Oliver. “What, Jennings?”

“I know you cheated. When I figure out how, you’re done.”

“Oh, fuck off. You lost fair and square because we’re better than you.”

“No way. I know you did something.” Oh, how Calum wanted to tell Oliver just what, exactly, he had done; what he had done to his sister, specifically. His momentary silence gave Oliver a chance to rip into him again. “And don’t think no one noticed those fucking hickeys on your neck. Honestly, I feel bad for whatever slut you convinced-”

“Shut the fuck up.” The rage in Calum’s voice was enough to silence everyone in hearing distance; which, he quickly realized, included Olivia.

He saw her eyebrows shoot up and her lips part in surprise. He hoped that she’d heard what Oliver said so that she wouldn’t think he was the one picking the fight. Luckily, Oliver wasn’t done talking. “What? Are you whipped, Hood? Does your little whore have-”

He didn’t get to finish because suddenly Calum was lunging at him fist first. He got one good hit in before he was being pulled back. He saw a few guys holding Oliver back, and suddenly Olivia was there, standing between the two seething men.

“I’m gonna fucking kill you!” Oliver yelled, struggling against his teammates.

“Don’t fucking talk about her like that!” Calum replied. He convinced Michael that he wasn’t going to attack again and shook him off.

“Ollie, why don’t we just go, okay?” Olivia said, her voice stern. “You don’t want to get in a fight right now.”

Oliver’s anger visibly lessened, but when he looked over her shoulder at Calum he scowled again. “Are you taking his side? Against your own brother?”

“Don’t know why she wouldn’t. You’re a bit of a prick, mate.” Calum cringed at Michael’s words, though he didn’t disagree.

“Of course, I’m on your side. I just don’t want you getting hurt. It’s not worth it.” Calum heard what sounded like desperation in her voice and knew that if he didn’t walk away, she would end up blaming him for the fight, if she didn’t already.

So, he huffed out a ‘whatever’ and grabbed his duffle, turning and walking off the field. He heard his team starting to follow him, and ignored Oliver’s taunts to the best of his ability.

Back in the car, his team quickly recovered from their surprise and started celebrating again. No one mentioned the fight. And they sure as hell didn’t bring up Calum’s mystery girl.

❁❁❁❁

After getting showered, Calum convinced the boys to go for celebratory drinks. He chose Rudy’s partially because he knew Oliver wouldn’t be there, and partially because he knew that it was Olivia’s favorite bar, so there was a good chance she would be there.

His eyes scanned every table and booth in the place while he waited on his beer. As they walked to join Ashton and Michael at their booth, Luke cleared his throat. “If you want… I can tell Cara we’re here. I’m sure she’ll drag Liv and Jessie along with her.”

“I think I might’ve pissed her off earlier. It was stupid to punch her brother right in front of her.”

“She’s smart, Cal. And she knows that her brother can be a dick. Trust me.” Luke said, pulling out his phone. “I’ll text Cara.”

Before Calum could protest again, Luke had already sent the message. As they settled into the booth, Michael turned to Calum. “Alright. Let’s talk about what happened earlier. I’ve never seen you that mad at Jennings.”

“You shouldn’t talk about women like that.” He answered, avoiding eye contact.

Michael scoffed. “Look, I know you’ve been hooking up with this chick for a few months now, but you can’t seriously have feelings for her. You would’ve at least told us her name if you did.”

“She doesn’t want anyone to know.”

“So she’s ashamed of you or something? You can’t be serious.”

“Knock it off, Mikey.” Luke said. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Do- do you know who it is? You told Luke?”

He hadn’t told Luke. Luke had figured it out on his own after seeing both Olivia and himself suddenly have hickeys enough times that he knew it wasn’t a coincidence. When he asked Calum about it, he didn’t hesitate to tell him the truth. He had already been considering telling him, anyway. Luke inhaled sharply and gave Calum an apologetic look.

“I didn’t tell Luke. He figured it out.” Luckily, Michael didn’t seem too offended, just a little hurt. “Trust me, Mike. If I could talk about it, I’d tell everyone.”

“The girls are here!” Luke said, sitting up straighter and waving at his girlfriend.

Calum looked up. When he saw Olivia, his mouth felt dry. She had changed out of that god awful jersey into high waisted black skinny jeans and a cropped, maroon, velvet tank top. She had straightened her hair, something he didn’t see her do often. He must’ve been gaping, because when she locked eyes with him a cocky smirk grew on her lips. Quickly, he cleared his throat and looked away, a hand moving to scratch the back of his neck.

He remembered the first time he’d seen her with her hair straightened. It was the night that they had first hooked up. They’d been around each other a few times since their best friends were dating, but they hadn’t really ever spoken to each other. He’d always had a little bit of a thing for her, but that night was different. He had come in after a loss and couldn’t take his eyes off of her. Eventually, she had confronted him about it.

“Okay, what’s your problem?” She raised both of her eyebrows. “You’ve been staring at me for the past two hours.”

He took a few seconds to respond, deciding if he should say what he was thinking or not. “Can’t help it. You look good.”

“Thanks.” She blinked in surprise. “You’re not too bad yourself, Hood. Black’s a good color on you.”

“Thanks, doll.”

She bit her bottom lip, drawing his attention. They looked very soft; he found himself imagining what kissing her would feel like. “No problem.”

“You wouldn’t want to get out of here, would you?” Normally, he wouldn’t have been so bold, but the alcohol buzzing through him and the way she was looking at him had Calum convinced that she was going to say yes.

To his dismay, she giggled. “Does that line normally work for you?”

“Normally, I don’t need any lines.” He winked.

“I’ll tell you what.” She said, a sinful smile on her red painted lips. “Tell me exactly what you want to do to me if I let you take me home. If I like your pitch, I’m all yours.”

A hushed silence fell over them as the girls arrived at their table. Cara slid in next to Luke. “What are you boys talking about?”

Michael immediately piped up. “Cal’s mystery girl.”

To her credit, she didn’t even flinch. Olivia raised an eyebrow, a curious look on her face, but Calum knew that she was probably freaking out inside. Jessie gasped, “Really? I saw the fight on facebook earlier. Who is she? Do you love her?”

Olivia looked amused as she leaned over the back of the booth. “Yeah, Cal. Do you? I mean, you must like her to have punched Ollie like that.”

“I didn’t like what he was saying about her.”

“Well, don’t keep us in the dark. Who is it?” Cara asked.

“Doesn’t matter.” Calum said. “Let’s move on.”

“Actually, Calum, can I talk to you? About earlier.” Olivia spoke up.

He nodded and slid out of his end of the booth to follow Olivia outside. Once they were away from prying ears, she stopped and turned to him with her arms crossed to protect herself from the slight chill in the air. “I’m sorry about Oliver. He was a dick today.”

“You don’t have to apologize to me, doll. You’re the one he was attacking.”

She nodded, sighing. “It was very sweet of you to punch him for me.”

“Someone had to.” She nodded, stepping towards him as someone walked past. One of his hands instinctively reached out to rest on her hip. “You look really good tonight, by the way.”

She smirked and leaned in closer to whisper in his ear. “I chose this outfit for you.”

He groaned, leaning his head to rest on the brick wall. “Don’t do this to me when we have to go back in there.”

He desperately wanted to kiss her. He wanted her to let her guard down enough to be seen with him like that in public; his hand on her hip, her’s resting on his chest. Noticing the shift in his attitude, she frowned. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” At her disillusioned look, he conceded. “I want to kiss you.”

“Cal-”

“I know. We can’t.” He cringed at the hostility in his voice.

“Are you- are you mad at me?” She said, incredulously. “If we get caught-”

“So what if we do?”

“Calum, I like being with you; and if Oliver finds out, we can’t do this anymore.”

Sometimes it really annoyed him that she was so loyal to her brother. “Why not?”

“What are you talking about? I’m not going to ruin my relationship with my brother over who I’m having sex with.”

“What if it wasn’t just sex? What if it was more?”

“What?” She took a small step back, as if his statement had been a strong gust of wind.

“I want more, Liv. I want to be with you.”

“Calum…”

“We don’t need to tell anyone. Not until we know if it’ll go anywhere. Let me take you out. We can get dinner or coffee or something.” His heart was beating out of his chest. He couldn’t believe that he was really asking her out in the middle of a fight.

“If Oliver-“

“Stop thinking about your fucking brother! What do you want, Olivia? Or is it just about sex for you?” Calum knew he was close to losing his temper. He was glad that she didn’t seem afraid, but wished it hadn’t come to that in the first place.

She met his eyes, hers full of uncertainty. The anger in her voice melted at the sound of the pain in his. “I… I don’t know. Let me think about it, okay?”

“Whatever.” He scoffed and went back inside, not waiting to see if she would follow him. He really hadn’t expected to get in a fight with both of the twins that day.

#calum fic #calum fanfic #5sos fanfic #5sos fic #footballer!cal #fanfic #calum hood #5sos #five seconds of summer #five seconds of summer fanfic

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themaddeningscience · 5 years

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Originally published in “When the Villain Comes Home” (Dragon Moon Press, 2012) and “Hero is a Four Letter Word” (Short Fuse, 2013)

Warning: This story contains profanity and sexual situations

Bullets fired into a crowd. Children screaming. Women crying. Men crying, too, not that any of them would admit it. The scent of gun powder, rotting garbage, stale motor oil, vomit, and misery. Police sirens in the distance, coming closer, making me cringe against old memories. Making me skulk into the shadows, hunch down in my hoodie, a beaten puppy.

This guy isn’t a supervillian. He isn’t even a villain, really. He is just an idiot. A child with a gun. And a grudge. Or maybe a god complex. Or a revenge scheme. Who the hell cares what he thought he had?

In the end, it amounts to the same.

The last place I want to be is in the centre of the police’s attention, again, so I sink back into the fabric, shying from the broad helicopter searchlights that sweep in through the narrow windows of the parking garage.

If this had been before, I might have leapt into action with one of my trusty gizmos. Or, failing that, at least with a witty verbal assault that would have left the moron boy too brain-befuddled to resist when I punched him in the oesophagus.

But this isn’t before.

I keep my eyes on the sky, instead of on the gun. If the Brilliant Bitch arrives, I want to see.

No one else is looking up. It has been a long, long time since one of…us…has donned sparkling spandex and crusaded out into the night to roust the criminal element from their lairs, or to enact a plot against the establishment, to bite a glove-covered thumb at ‘the man.’ A long time since one of us has done much more than pretend to not be one of us.

The age of the superhero petered out surprisingly quickly. The villains learnt our lessons; the heroes became obsolete.

A whizzing pop beside my left ear. I duck behind the back wheel of a sleek penis-replacement-on-wheels. The owner will be very upset when he sees the bullet gouges littering the bright red altar to his own virility.

I’ve never been shot before. I’ve been electrocuted, eye-lasered, punched by someone with the proportional strength of a spotted gecko and, memorably, tossed into the air by a breath-tornado created by a hero whose Italian lunch my schemes had clearly just interrupted.

Being shot seems fearfully mundane after all that.

A normal, boring death scares me more than any other kind—especially if it’s due to a random, pointless, unpredictable accident of time and place intersecting with a stupid poser with the combination to daddy’s gun drawer and the key to mommy’s liquor cabinet. I had been on the way to the bargain grocery store for soymilk. It doesn’t look like I’m going to get any now.

Because only the extraordinary die in extraordinary ways. And I am extraordinary no longer.

I look skyward. Still no Crimson Cunt.

Someone screams. Someone else cries. I sit back against the wheel and refrain from whistling to pass the time. If I was on the other side of the parking garage, I could access the secret tunnel I built into the lower levels back when the concrete was poured thirty years ago. But the boy and his bullets are between us. I’ve nothing to do but wait.

The boy is using a 9mm Barretta, military issue, so probably from daddy’s day job in security at the air force base. He has used up seven bullets. The standard Barretta caries a magazine of fifteen. Eight remain, unless one had already been prepared in the chamber, which I highly doubt as no military man would be unintelligent or undisciplined enough to carry about a loaded gun aimed at his own foot. The boy is firing them at an average rate of one every ninety-three seconds—punctuated by unintelligible screaming—and so by my estimation I will be pinned by his unfriendly fire for another seven hundred and forty-four seconds, or twelve point four minutes.

However, the constabulary generally arrive on the scene between six and twenty-three minutes after an emergency call. As this garage is five and a half blocks from the 2nd Precinct, I estimate the stupid boy has another eight point seven minutes left to live before a SWAT team puts cold lead between his ribs.

Better him than me.

Except, probability states that he will kill another three bystanders before that time. I scrunch down further, determined not to be a statistic today. This brings me directly into eye-line with a corpse.

There is blood all around her left shoulder. If she didn’t die of shock upon impact, then surely she died of blood loss. Her green eyes are wide and wet.

I wonder who she used to be.

I wonder if she is leaving behind anyone who will weep and rail and attend the police inquest and accuse the system of being too slow, too corrupt, too over-burdened. I wonder if they will blame the boy’s parents or his teachers. Will they only blame themselves? Or her?

And then, miraculously, she blinks.

Well, that certainly is a surprise. Perhaps the trauma is not as extensive as I estimated. To be fair, I cannot see most of her. She has fallen awkwardly, the momentum of her tumble half-concealing her under the chassis of the ludicrously large Hummer beside my penis-car.

I am so fascinated by the staggering of her torso as she tries to suck in a breath, the staccato rhythm of her blinks, the bloody slick of teeth behind her lips, that it’s all over before I am aware of it.

This must be what people mean by time flying.

I’m not certain I’ve ever felt that strange loss of seconds ever before. I am so very used to being able to track everything. It’s disconcerting. I don’t like it.

And yet the boy is downed, the police are here, paramedics crawling over the dead and dying like swarming ants. I wait for them to find my prize, to pull her free of the SUV’s shadow and whisk her away to die under ghastly fluorescent lights, too pumped full of morphine to know she is slipping away.

I wait in the shadow of the wheel and hope that they miss me.

They do.

Only, in missing me, they miss her, as well. She is blinking, gritty and desperate, and now the police are leaving, and the paramedics are shunting their human meat into the sterile white cubes, and they have not found her, my fascinating, panting young lady.

Oh dear. This is a dilemma.

I am reformed. I am no longer a villain. But I am also no hero and I like my freedom far too much to want to risk it by bringing her to the attention of the officials. What to do? Save her and risk my freedom, or let her die, and walk free but burdened with the knowledge of yet another life that I might have been able to save, and didn’t?

I dither too long. They are gone. Only the media are left, and I certainly don’t want them to catch me in their unblinking grey lenses. The woman blinks, sad and slow. She knows that she is dead. It’s coming. Her fingers twitch towards me—reaching.

A responsible, honest citizen would not let her die. So I slink out of my shadow and gather her up, the butterfly struggle of her pulse in her throat against my arm, and slip away through my secret tunnel.

I steal her away to save her life.

It occurs to me, when I lean back and away from the operating table, my hands splashed with gore, that I’ve kidnapped this woman. She has seen my face. Others will see the neat way I’ve made my nanobots stitch the flesh and bone of her shoulder back together. They will recognize the traces of the serum that I’ve infused her with in order to speed up her healing, because I once replaced the totality of my blood with the same to keep myself disease free, young looking, and essentially indestructible. The forensics agents will know this handiwork for mine.

And then they will know that at least one of my medical laboratories escaped their detection and their torches. They will fear that. No matter that I gave my word to that frowning judge that I had been reformed, no matter that the prison therapist holds papers signed to that effect, no matter that I’ve personally endeavoured to become and remain honest, forthright, and supportive; one look at my lair will remind them of what I used to be, what they fear I might still be, and that will be enough. That will be the end. I will go back to the human zoo.

And I cannot have that. I’ve worked too hard to be forgotten to allow them to remember.

I take off the bloody gloves and apron and put them in my incinerator, where they join my clothing from earlier tonight. I take a shower and dress—jeans, a tee-shirt, another nondescript wash-greyed hoodie: the uniform of the youth I appear to number among. Then I sit in a dusty, plush chair beside the cot in the recovery room and I wait for her to wake. The only choice that seems left to me is the very one I had been trying to avoid from the start of this whole mess—the choice to go bad, again. I’ve saved her life, but in doing so, I’ve condemned us both.

Fool. Better to have let her died in that garage. Only, her eyes had been so green, and so sad…

I hate myself. I hate that the Power Pussy might have been right: that the only place for me is jail; that the world would be better off without me; that it’s a shame I survived her last, powerful assault.

When she wakes, the first thing the young woman says is, “You’re Proffes—”

I don’t let her finish. “Please don’t say that name. I don’t like it.”

Her sentence stutters to a halt, unsaid words tumbling from between her teeth to crash into her lap. She looks down at them, wringing them into the light cotton sheets, and nods.

“Olly,” I say.

Her face wrinkles up. “Olly?”

“Oliver.”

The confusion clears, clouds parting, and she flashes a quirky little gap between her two front teeth at me. “Really? Seriously? Oliver?”

I resist the urge to bare my own teeth at her. “Yes.”

“Okay. Olly. I’m Rachel.” Then she peers under the sheet. She cannot possibly see the tight, neat little rows of sutures through the scrubs (or perhaps she can, who knows what powers people are being born into nowadays?), but she nods as if she approves and says, “Thank you.”

“I couldn’t let you die.”

“The Prof would have.”

“I’m Olly.”

She nods. “Okay.”

“Are you thirsty?” I point to a bottle of water on the bedside table.

She makes a point of checking the cap before she drinks, but I cannot blame her. Of course, she also does not know that I’ve ways of poisoning water through plastic, but I won’t tell her that. Besides, I haven’t done so.

“So,” she says. “Thank you.”

I snort, I can’t help it. It’s a horribly ungentlemanly sound, but my disbelief is too profound.

“Don’t laugh. I mean it,” she says.

“I’m laughing because you mean it. Rachel.” I ask, “How old are you?”

She blushes, a crimson flag flapping across a freckled nose, and I curse myself this weakness, this fascination with the human animal that has never managed to ebb, even after all that time in solitary confinement.

“Twenty-three,” she says. She is lying—her eyes shift to the left slightly, she wets her lips, her breathing increases fractionally. I see it plain as a road sign on a highway. I also saw her ID when I cleaned out her backpack. She is twenty-seven.

“Twenty-three,” I allow. “I was put into prison when you were eight years old. I did fifteen years of a life sentence and was released early on parole for good behaviour and a genuine desire to reform. The year prior to my sentencing I languished in a city cell, and the two before that I spent mostly tucked away completing my very last weapon. Therefore, the last memory you can possibly have of the ‘Prof,’ as you so glibly call him, was from when you were six.” I sit forward. “Rachel, my dear, can you really say that at six years old you understood what it meant to have an honest to goodness supervillain terrorizing your home?”

She shakes her head, the blush draining away and leaving those same freckles to stand out against her glowing pale skin like ink splattered on vellum.

“That is why I laughed. It amuses me that I’ve lived so long that someone like you is saying thank you to me. Ah, and I see another question there. Yes?”

“You don’t look old enough,” she says softly.

I smile and flex a fist. “I age very, very slowly.”

“Well, I know that. I just meant, is that part of the…you know, how you were born?”

“No,” I say. “I did it to myself.”

“Do you regret it?”

I flop back in my chair, blinking. No one has ever asked me that before. I’ve never asked myself. “I don’t know,” I admit. “Would you?”

She shrugs, and then winces, pressing one palm against her shoulder. “Maybe,” she admits. “I always thought that part of the stories was a bit sad. That the Prof has to live forever with what he’s done.”

“No, not forever,” I demur. “Just a very long time. May I ask, what stories?”

“Um! Oh, you know, social science—recent history. I had to do a course on the Superhero Age, in school. I was thinking of specializing in Vigilantism.”

“A law student, then.”

“Yes.”

“How urbane.”

“Yes, it sort of is, isn’t it?” She smiles faintly. “What is it about superheroes that attracts us mousy sorts?”

“I could say something uncharitable about ass-hugging spandex and cock cups, but I don’t think that would apply to you.”

“Cape Bunnies?” she asks, with a grin. “No, definitely not my style.”

“Cape Bunn—actually, I absolutely have no desire to know.” I stand. I feel weary in a way that has nothing to do with my age. “If you are feeling up to it, Rachel, may I interest you in some lunch?”

“Actually, I should go,” she says. “I feel fantastic! I mean, this is incredible. What you did. I thought I was a goner.”

“You nearly were,” I say.

“And thank you, again. But my mom must be freaking out. I should go to a hospital or something. At least call her.”

“Oh, Rachel,” I say softly. “You’ve studied supervillians. You know what my answer to that has to be.”

She is quiet for a moment, and then those beautiful green eyes go wide. “No,” she says.

“I am sorry. I didn’t mean to trade my freedom for yours. I thought I was doing good. For once.”

“But…but,” she stutters.

“I can’t.”

She blinks and then curses. “Stupid, I’m not talking about that! I mean, they can’t really think that about you, can they? You saved my life. This…this isn’t a bad thing!”

I laugh again. “Are you defending me? Are you sure that’s wise?”

“Don’t condescend to me!” she snaps. “That’s not fair. You’ve done your time. You saved me. Isn’t that enough for them?”

“Oh, Rachel. You certainly do have a pleasant view of the world.”

“Don’t call me naive!” The way she spits it makes me think that she says this quite often.

“I’m not,” I say. “Only optimistic.” I gesture through the door. “The kitchen is there. I will leave the door unlocked. I’ve a closet through there—take whatever you’d like. I’m afraid your clothing was too bloody.”

“Fine,” she snarls.

I nod once and make my way into the kitchen, closing the door behind me to leave her to rage and weep in privacy. I know from personal experience how embarrassing it is to realize that your freedom has been forcefully taken from you, in public.

I built this particular laboratory-cum-bolthole in the 1950s, back when the world feared nuclear strikes. I was a different man then, though no less technologically apt, and so it has been outfitted with all manner of tunnels and closets, storage chambers, libraries, and bedrooms. The fridge keeps food fresh indefinitely, so the loaf of bread, basket of tomatoes and head of lettuce I left here in1964 are still fit makings for sandwiches. I also open a can of soup for us to share.

She comes out of the recovery room nine thousand and sixty-six seconds—fifteen point eleven minutes—after; a whole three minutes longer than I had estimated she would take. There is stubbornness in her that I had not anticipated, but for which I should have been prepared. She did not die in that garage, and it takes great courage and tenacity to beat off the Grim Reaper.

“I’m sorry, Oliver,” she says, and sits in the plastic chair. I suppose the look is called “retro” now, but this kitchen was once the height of taste.

“Why are you apologizing to me?” I set a bowl in front of her. She doesn’t even shoot me a suspicious look; I suppose she’s decided to take the farce of believing me a good person to its conclusion.

“It sucks that you’re so sure people are going to hate you.”

“Aren’t they?”

She pouts miserably and sips her soup. It’s better than the rage I had been expecting, or an escape attempt. I wasn’t looking forward to having to chase her down and wrangle her into a straitjacket, or drug her into acquiescence. I would hate to have to dim that keen gaze of hers.

I sit down opposite her and point to her textbook, propped up on my toaster oven for me to read as I stirred the soup. It had been in the bloody backpack I stripped from her, and seemed sanitary enough to save. Her cell phone, I destroyed.

“This is advanced, Rachel,” I say. “Are you enjoying it?”

She flicks her eyes to the book. “You’ve read it.”

“Nearly finished. I read fast.”

“You didn’t flip to the end?”

“Should I?”

“No,” she blurts. “No. Go at your own pace. I just…I mean, I do like it,” she said. “Especially the stuff about supervillain reformation.”

I sigh and set down my spoon. “Oh, Rachel.”

“I’m serious, Oliver! Just let me make a phone call. I promise, no one will arrest you. I won’t even tell them I met you.”

“You won’t have to.”

She slams her fists into the tabletop, the perfect picture of childish frustration. “You can’t keep me here forever.”

“I can,” I say. “It is physically possible. What you mean to say is, ‘You don’t want to keep me here forever.’”

She goes still. “Do you want to?”

I can. I know I can. I can be like one of those men who kidnaps a young lady and locks her in his basement for twenty years, forcing her to become dependent on him, forcing her to love him. But I don’t want to. I’ve nothing but distaste for men who can’t earn love, and feel the need to steal it. Cowards.

“No,” I say.

“Then why are you hesitating? Let me go.”

“Not until you’re fully healed, at least,” I bargain. I’m not used to bargaining. Giving demands, yes. But begging, never. “When no trace of what I’ve done remains. Is that acceptable? But in return, you must not try to escape. You could hurt yourself worse, and frankly I don’t want to employ the kind of force that would be required to keep you. That is my deal.”

“You promise?”

I sneer. “I don’t break promises.”

“I know,” she says. “I read about that, too. Okay. It’s a deal.”

I spend the night working on schematics for a memory machine. I’ve never tampered with the mind of another before—I respect intellect far too much to go mucking about in someone’s grey matter like a child in a tide pool—but I have no other choice. Rachel cannot remember our time together.

Rachel sleeps in one of the spare bedrooms. She enjoyed watching old movies all afternoon, and I confess I enjoyed sitting beside her on the sofa. We had frozen pizza for dinner, and her gaze had spent almost as much time on the screen as on my face.

In the morning, my blueprints are ready and my chemicals begin to simmer on Bunsen burners. I leave the lab and find her at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and flipping through my scrapbook. It’s filled with newspaper articles and photos, wanted posters and DVDs of news broadcasts. I’ve never thought to keep it in a safe or to put it away somewhere because, besides Miss Rachel, no one has ever been to this bolthole but me.

“You found the soymilk, I see,” I say. She nods and doesn’t look up from her intense perusal of a favourite article of mine, the only one where the reporter got it. “And my book.”

“It’s like a shrine,” she says. “I thought you’d hate all these superheroes, but there’s just as much in here about them as you.”

“I’ve great respect for anyone who wants to better the world.” I touch the side of the coffeepot —still warm. I pour myself a cup and sit across from her.

“See… that’s what’s freaking me out, a bit,” she says. “You’re such a…”

“What?”

“You seem like such a sweet guy.”

I laugh again.

“What?”

“Don’t mistake my youth for sweetness.”

“I’m not, but…I don’t know, you’re not a supervillain.”

“I’m not a superhero, either.”

“You can be something in the middle. You can just be a nice guy.”

“I’ve never been just a ‘nice guy,’ Rachel. Not even before.”

“I think you’re being one now.” She leans across the table and kisses me. I don’t close my eyes, or move my mouth. This is a surprise too, but an acceptable one.

When she sits back, I ask, “Is this why you were studying my face so intently last night while you pretended to watch movies?”

She blushes again, and it’s fascinating. “Shut up,” she mumbles.

I smile. “Are you a Cape Bunny after all, Miss Rachel?”

“A Labcoat Bunny, maybe,” she says. “I’ve always gone for brain over brawn.”

“Who are you lashing out against,” I ask calmly, my tone probably just this side of too cool, “that you think kissing the man who has kidnapped you is a good idea?”

Rachel drops back down into her seat. “Way to ruin the moment, Romeo.”

“That is not an answer.”

“No one!”

“And, that, dear Rachel, is a lie.”

She throws up her hands. “I don’t know, okay! My mother! The school! The courts! The whole stupid system! A big stupid world that says the man who saved my life has to go to jail for it!”

“I am part of the revenge scheme, then,” I say. “If you come out of your captivity loving your captor, then they cannot possibly think I am evil. You have it all planned out, my personal redemption. Or perhaps this is a way to earn a seat in that big-ticket law school?”

She stares at me, slack jawed, a storm brewing behind those beautiful green eyes. “You’re a bit of a dick, you know that?”

“That is what the Crimson Cunt used to—”

“Don’t call her that.”

“Why not? The Super Slut won’t hear me say it. Not under all this concrete.”

“Shut up!”

“Why?” I sneer. “Protecting a heroine you’ve never met?”

“She deserves better, even from you!”

“Oh, have I ruined your image of me, Rachel? Am I not sweet and misunderstood anymore?”

“You still shouldn’t—”

“What, hate her? She put me in jail!” I copy her and slam my fists on the tabletop. My mug topples, hot liquid splashing out between us. “I think I’ve a right to be bitter about that.”

“But it was for the good! It made you better.”

“No, it made me cowed. I’ve lost all my ambition, dear Rachel. And that is why I am just a normal citizen. I am too tired.”

“But Divine—”

“Don’t say her name, either!”

Rachel stands and pounds her fists on the table again, shaking my fallen mug, and I stand as well, too furious to want to be shorter than her.

“Asshole!” she snarls.

“And she was a ball-breaker on a power trip. She was no better for the city than I! The only difference was that she didn’t have the gumption, the ambition, the foresight to do what had to be done! I was the only one who saw! Me. She towed the line. She kept the status quo. I was trying to change the world! She was just a stupid blonde bimbo with huge tits and a small brain—”

“Don’t talk about my mother that way!”

Oh.

I drop back down into my seat, knees giving way without my say-so. “Well, this is a turn,” I admit.

“Everyone knows!” she spits. “It’s hard to miss. Same eyes, same cheekbones.”

“I’ve never seen your mother’s eyes and cheekbones.”

“What, were you living under a rock when she unmasked?”

I smile, and it’s thin and bitter. “I was in solitary confinement for five years. By the time I got out, it must have been old news. And I had no stomach to look up my old nemesis.”

Rachel looks away, and her eyes are bright with tears that don’t skitter down her cheeks. I wonder if they are for her mother, or for herself, or because I’ve said such terrible things and her opinion of me has diminished. They are certainly not because she pities me.

Nobody pities me. I got, as I am quite often reminded, exactly what I deserved.

“What does your mother do now?” I ask, after the silence has become unbearable. There is nothing to count or calculate in the silence, besides the precise, quiet click of the second hand ticking ever onward, ever onward, while I am left behind.

“Socialite,” Rachel says. “Cars. Money. Married a real estate developer.”

“Is he your father?”

She swings her gaze back to me, sharp. “Why would you ask that?”

“Why does the notion that he might not be offend you?”

Her lips pucker, and with that scowl, I can see it: the pissy frown, the stubborn thrust of her chin. There is the Fantastic Floozy, hating me through her daughter.

“It doesn’t,” she lies. She twists her hands in front of her again. “Fine, it does. I don’t know, okay? I don’t think she knows. She wants it to be him.”

“So do you,” I press. “Because that would make you normal.”

She looks up brusquely.

“Please, Rachel,” I say. “I am quite clever. Don’t insult us both by forgetting. The way you do your hair, your clothes, the law school ambitions, it all screams ‘I don’t want to be like my mother.’ Which, if your mother is a superheroine, probably means that you are also desperate to not be one of…us.”

“I’m not,” she whispers.

“I dare say that if you have no desire to, then you won’t be,” I agree. I lean forward to impart my great secret. She’s the first I’ve told and I don’t know why I’m sharing it. Only, perhaps, that it will make her less miserable. “Here is something they never tell anyone: if you don’t use your powers, if you don’t flex that extra little muscle in your grey, squishy brain, it will not develop. It will atrophy and die. Why do you think there are so few of us now? Nobody wants to be a hero.”

“Really?” she whispers, awed, hatred draining from her face.

“Really,” I say. “Especially after the sort of example your mother set.”

Rachel rocks back again, the furious line between her eyebrows returning, and yes, I recognize that, too, have seen that above a red domino mask before.

“Why do you say things like that?” she asks, hands thrown skyward in exasperation. She winces.

“Don’t rip your stitches, my dear,” I admonish.

“Don’t change the subject! You wouldn’t talk about the Kamelion Kid that way, or Wild West, or…any of them! You’d have respect! What about The Tesla? You respect him. I’ve seen the pictures on your wall and you—why are you laughing?”

And I am laughing. I am guffawing like the bawdy, brawling youth I resemble. “Because I am The Tesla!”

She rocks back on her heels, eyes comically wide and then suspiciously narrow. “But you…Prof killed The Tesla.”

“In a sense, he did.”

Her eyes jump between me and the door to my lab—the only door locked to Rachel—and back to me. “You were a hero first.”

“Yes.”

“And it didn’t work, did it?”

“…no.”

“Because people…people don’t want to change. Don’t want to think.”

“Yes. My plans would have been good for society. Would have forced changes for the better. But people just want a hero to keep things the way they already are.”

She looks at her law textbook, which rests exactly where I had left it the night before, propped on the toaster oven.

“So you made it look like The Tesla was dead.”

“Heroes can save the world. But villains can change it, Rachel.”

She looks up. “I think I want to hate you, Olly, but I can’t figure out if I should.”

“It’s okay if you hate me,” I say. “I won’t mind.”

“Yes, I think you would,” she says. She flattens her right palm over her left shoulder.

We sit like that for a long moment. I forget to count the seconds. Time flies when I am around Rachel, and I find that I am beginning to enjoy it.

Rachel sulks in her room for the afternoon, which bothers me not at all, as I’ve experiments to attend. When I come back out, she is sullenly reading her textbook on the sofa, and she has found the beer. One open bottle is beside her elbow and three empty ones are on the floor.

“It’s not wise to drink when you’re on antibiotics,” I say, wiping my hands on my labcoat. They leave iridescent green smears on the fabric, but it’s completely non-toxic or I would not be exposing her to it.

“I’m not on antibiotics,” she mutters mulishly.

“Yes, you are,” I counter. “There is a slow-release tablet under your skin near the wound.”

She makes a face and pushes away her textbook. It slaps onto the carpet.“That’s just gross.”

“But efficient.”

She looks up, gaze suddenly tight. “What else did you put in me?”

I walk over and take away her beer. And then, because it would be a waste of booze to dump it down the sink, and I have been on a limited income since I ceased robbing banks, and because I enjoy the perverseness of having my lips on the same bottlemouth as hers after having so recently admonished her for kissing me, I take a drink.

“Not that, if that’s what you’re implying, my dear Rachel,” I say. She blinks hard, my innuendo sinking home.

“What? What, no! I didn’t mean…”

“I’m more of gentleman than that.”

“I get that!” she splutters. “I just mean…where did you get the replacement blood? What kind of stitches? Am I bionic now?”

“No more than you were before,” I say. “Nanobots are actively knitting the torn flesh back together, but they will die in a week and your liver will flush them from your system. The stitches and sutures are biodegradable and will dissolve by then. The rest of the antibiotic tablet will be gone in two or three days, and the very small infusion of my vitality serum only gave your immune system a boost and your regenerative drive a bit of extra gas. You are in all ways, my dear Rachel, utterly and completely in-extraordinary. Your greatest fear is unrealized.” I finish off the beer with a swig, liking the way her green eyes follow the line of my throat as I swallow, and then go to the kitchen and retrieve two more.

I hand one to her and flop down onto the sofa beside her. She curls into a corner to give me enough room and then, after eyeing the mess on my coat, thrusts impertinent—and freezing!—toes under my thigh. “Dear me, Rachel, stepping up your campaign?”

“You started it,” she says. “Re-started it. With the…bottle thingy.”

I arch a teasing eyebrow. “Bottle thingy?”

She shakes her head. “I think I’m a little drunk.”

“I think you are,” I agree.

“Enabler,” she says, and we clink beers. She drinks and this time I watch her. Her throat is, in every way, normal. Boring. I cannot stop looking at it. Her toes wiggle. “How can you read me so well?” she asks. “I mean, I didn’t even have to say, ‘I’m scared of turning into my mom,’ but you knew.”

I shrug. “I’m a great student of the human creature. We all say so much without saying a thing.”

“Do you ever say more than you want to?”

I smile secretively, a flash of teeth that I know will infuriate her with its vagueness. “Rarely, any more. I’ve had a long time to learn to control my, as poker players would call them, ‘tells.’”

“Hmph,” she mutters and takes another drink. I swallow some of my beer to distract myself. She wriggles her toes again, and pushes them further. Soon they will brush right against my…but I assume that is the point.

“Careful, Rachel,” I warn. “Are you certain this is something you want to do?”

“Yes.”

“You are drunk and you want revenge on your mother.”

“Maybe. Maybe I want to thank you for saving my life. Maybe I want to reward you for being a good guy.”

“What if I don’t want your thanks, or your reward?” I ask.

She smiles and her big toe tickles the undercurve of my testes. “Don’t you?” she asks, and her expression is salacious. I provided her with no bra, I had none to give, and under my borrowed tee-shirt her nipples are pert.

“I do.” I set aside both of our beers and reach for her. She comes into my arms, gladly, little mouth wet and insistent against mine as she wriggles her way onto my lap. Iridescent green smears up her thighs. “But maybe…oh!” I gasp into her mouth as clever little fingers work their way inside my waistband. I return the favour. Intelligence must be rewarded.

“Maybe?” she prompts, pressing down against my hand.

“Maybe I just want revenge on your mother, too.”

She jerks back as if I’ve bitten her. “Oh my god, how can one man be such a dick?”

I press upwards so her pelvis comes in contact with the part of my anatomy in discussion. “I am honest, Rachel. There is a difference.”

She sits back, arms crossing over the breasts I hadn’t yet touched. “An honest supervillian,” she scoffs.

I stand, dumping her onto the floor. “I think we’re done here.”

“Are we, Profess—”

“I’ve asked you not to call me that!”

She cowers back from my anger. Then it fuels her. “Fuck you, Olly,” she says, standing.

“I thought that was the idea,” I agree, “but apparently not.”

“You’re nothing like I thought you’d be!”

I laugh again. “And how could you have had any concept of how I’d be? Did the Dynamic Dyke tell stories? I bet she did. And you felt sorry for me. The poor Professor, beat up by mommy, hated – like you were. An outcast, like you were. Not good enough, like you were. Was I your imaginary friend, Rachel? Did you write my name in hearts on your binders? Did you fantasize about me?”

“Shut up!” she screams.

Her cheeks are red again, her eyes glistening, her mouth bruised, and I want to grab her, kiss her, feel her ass through the borrowed sweatpants. Instead I fold my hands behind my back, because I told the truth before—I am a gentleman. I say nothing.

“You’re not supposed to be like this!”

“Be like what?” I ask, again. “Explain, Rachel.”

She collapses. It’s a slow folding inward, knees and stomach first, face in her hands, physicality followed by emotion as she sobs into the carpet. I stand above her and wait, because she deserves this cry. Crying helps people engage with their emotions, or so I’m told.

When her sobbing slows, precisely one thousand six hundred and seventy-three seconds later—twenty-seven point nine minutes—she unfolds and stands, wiping her nose. I offer her a handkerchief from the pocket of my labcoat, and she takes it and turns her back to me, cleaning up her face.

She picks up the textbook. She opens it to the back, to those useless blank pages that are the fault of how books are bound, and for the first time in a very, very long time, I am shocked.

The back of the book has been collaged with photographs. Of me.

Computer printouts of me when I was the Prof. Newspaper clippings of my trial. Me, walking down the street, hunched into the shadow of my sweater’s hood. Me, buying soymilk. Me, through the window of the shitty apartment on which Oliver Munsen can barely afford to pay rent. Me, three days ago, cutting through that same parking garage.

Genuine joy floods my blood. A small shot of adrenaline seethes up into my brain and I can’t help the smile, because I missed this, I really did. “Oh, Rachel. Are you my stalker? How novel! I’ve never had a stalker before.”

She snaps the cover shut. “I’m not a stalker.”

“Just an admirer?” I ask, struggling to keep the condensation out of my voice. “Or do you want me to teach you how to be a villain? Really get back at mommy dearest?” Her expression sours. “Ah. But you already know that you can’t be. You knew before I told you that you were born boring. So this is the next best thing.” I reach out, grasp her elbows lightly, rub my callused thumbs across the tender flesh on the inside of them. She shivers. “Tell me, how were you going to do it, Rachel? Were you going to accidentally bump into me in that parking garage? Were you going to spill a beer on me in a bar? Buy me a coffee at my favourite cafe? Surely getting shot was not in the plan.”

“It’s not like that!” she says, but her eyes are closed, her lashes fluttering. Her chest bobs as she tries to catch her breath.

“Then what is it like?”

“I don’t know! I just…I just saw you one day, okay? I recognized you, from mom’s pictures on the wall, and I thought, you know, I should tell her. But I thought I would follow you first, you know, figure out where you live, or something.”

“Except that I wasn’t being dastardly and villainous.”

“You sat in the bookstore and read a whole magazine. And then you paid for it.”

I smirk. “How shocking.”

“For me it was.” She tips forward, breasts squishing, hot and soft, against my chest. “The kinds of stories I heard about you as a kid…”

“And you were fascinated.”

“And I was fascinated.”

“And so you followed me.”

“I followed you.”

“And then what, my dear Rachel?”

She wraps her arms around my neck and pulls me down for a kiss I don’t resist.

“You seemed so lonely,” she says, breath puffing into my mouth. “Are you lonely, Olly?”

“Oh, yes.” I pick her up and carry her off to her bedroom.

The mattress is new, she is the first person to ever have slept on it, but it still squeaks. After, she drops off, satisfied, mumbling amusing endearments about how wonderful it is to make love to someone who is so studious, makes such a thorough examination of his subjects.

Tonight I decide to sleep. I don’t do it very often, but I don’t want to be awake anymore. I don’t want to think. I close my eyes and force my dreams to stay away.

In the morning, I’m troubled. I think I’ve made a very bad choice, but I’m not sure how to rectify it. I am not even sure how to articulate it.

Rachel was right. I am lonely. I am desperately, painfully lonely. And I will be for the rest of my unnaturally long life. But Rachel is lonely, too. Desperate in her own way, desperate for the approval of a mother I can only assume was distant and busy in Rachel’s youth, and then too famous and busy in her adolescence. Rachel wants to be nothing like her mother, wants to hurt her, punish her, and yet…wants to impress her so very badly that she is willing to take the ultimate step, to profess love for a man her mother once hated, to ‘fix him,’ to ‘make him better.’ To make him, me, good.

Only, Rachel doesn’t understand. I don’t want to be better, or good, or saved. I just want to live my boring, in-extraordinary life in peace and quiet, and then die. I don’t want to be her experiment. And yet her fierce little kisses…her wide green eyes…

I look down at the schematics under my elbow and sigh. The scent of burning bacon wafts in through the vents that lead to the kitchen, and the utter domesticity of it plucks at the back of my eyes, heating them. I ‘m still a fool, and I’m no less in over my head than I was two days ago.

I abandon the lab and rescue my good iron skillet from the madwoman who has pushed her way into my life. When she turns her face up for a kiss, I give it to her, and everything else she asks for, too.

And I can have this, because I am not a supervillain any more. But I am not a superhero either. If I was, I could turn her away, like I should.

After lunch, I hand her my cell phone. It has been boosted so that the signal can pass through concrete bunker walls, but cannot be tracked back to its location.

“What’s that for?” she asks.

“Call your mother,” I say. “Tell her you’re okay. You’re just staying with a friend. The shooting freaked you out.”

She frowns. “What if I don’t want to?”

“You were arguing that I should let you call.”

“Yeah, before.”

“Rachel,” I admonish. “Do you really want her frantically looking for you?”

She pales. I imagine what it must have been like for her when she ran away from home for the first time. “No, guess not,” she mumbles and dials a number. “Yeah, hi Mom. No, no, I’m cool. Yeah, decided to stay with a friend instead of coming home from campus this weekend. No, no, it’s fine. I’m fine. There’s no need for the guilt trip! I said I’m fine! God!…okay. Right. Sorry. Okay. I’ll see you next…” she looks at me. “Next Saturday?” I nod. “Next Saturday. Right. Fine. I love you, too.” She hangs up and places the phone between us. “There, happy?”

“Yes. I am curious Rachel, how do you intend on springing me on your mother? And how will you keep her from punching my face clear off?”

She picks at her cuticles. “I hadn’t really thought that far ahead.”

“I gathered.” I stand from the table and go to do the dishes. I can’t abide a mess.

She comes up behind me and wraps her arms around my waist and presses her cheek against my back, and asks, “What do you want to do this afternoon?”

“Whatever you want,” I say. “I’m all yours.” I turn in her arms to find her grinning. She believes me, whole-heartedly, and she should. I never lie, and it’s the truth. For now.

When the week is over, I sit her down on my operating table and carefully poke around the bullet wound. In the x-ray, the bones appear healed without a scar. Her skin is dewy and unmarked. The stitches have dissolved and a scan with a handheld remote shows that the nanobots are all dead and ninety-three percent have been flushed from her system. I anticipate the other seven percent will be gone after her next trip to the toilet.

I do another scan, a bit lower down, but there is nothing there to be concerned about, either. We have not been using prophylactics, but I’ve been sterile since I used the serum. It was a personal choice. I had no desire to outlive my grandchildren.

Rachel hops from the table, bare feet on the white tile, and grins. “It’s Saturday!” she says.

“Yes, it is.”

“Time to go!”

“Yes.”

She takes my hand. “And you’re coming with me, Olly. You’re coming with me and then they’ll see, they’ll all see. You’re different now. You’re a good man.”

I smile and close my fingers around hers and, for the first time in many decades, I lie. “Yes, I am, thank you.” I use our twined fingers to pull her into the kitchen. “Celebratory drink before we go?”

She grins. “Gonna open that champagne I saw in the back of the fridge?”

I laugh. “Clever Rachel. I can’t hide anything from you.”

Only I can. I am. When I pop the cork she shrieks in delight. Every ticking second of her happiness stabs at me like a branding iron and dagger all in one.

I thought I would need a whole machine, a gun, a delivery device, but in the end my research and experiments offered up a far more simplistic solution: rohypnol. Except that it is created by me, of course, so it’s programmable, intelligent in the way the cheap, pathetic drug available to desperate, stupid children in night clubs is not. My drug knows which memories to take away.

Clever, beautiful, dear Rachel trusts me. I pour our drinks and hand her the glass that is meant for her. I smile and chat with her as she sips, pretending to be oblivious as her eyelids slip downwards, giving her no clue that there is anything amiss.

I catch both her and the glass before they hit the floor. Tonight she will wake in her own bed. She will honestly remember spending the week with a friend she then had a fight with, and no longer speaks to. She will wonder what happened to her backpack, her cell phone, her law textbook. She will not remember the Prof, or The Tesla. Her mother will be annoyed that she will have to tell her the stories over again, stories that Rachel should have internalized during her childhood.

And I will shut down this hidey-hole and go back to my apartment and cash my welfare cheque and watch television. And it will be good. It will be as it should be.

The stupid boy with the gun might have been the bad guy in our little melodrama, but I am the villain.

I am the coward.

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makeitquietly · 6 years

Photo

We had a good thing going but you had this big chip on your shoulder because I did a picture with someone else.

So the trailer has Oliver Hardy (John C. Reilly) and Hal Roach (Danny Huston) looking at Harry Langdon (anyone know the actor?) like they’d found a perfect replacement for Stan Laurel and were ready to start filming the first movie in a planned new Langdon & Hardy series. While I haven’t found any footage/photos of Babe and Hal posing with Harry (please tell me if such exist!), Zenobia (1939) got made and plenty of promo photos starring Langdon and Hardy were taken too.

Rumours about Laurel and Hardy breaking up had been around at least since 1934, and some of the speculation in the papers suggested that it was due to the two of them not getting along, though most fans, at least those who write books, insist on all the problems having been creative ones (plus the usual pissing contest type of thing) between Laurel and producer Roach. When they weren’t about Stan’s personal life intruding his work. Or everything combined. And let’s not forget fights about money & contracts in general.

Whatever the trouble, I’ve never seen a single piece of writing saying that Hardy showed any interest in siding with his on-screen partner at any time during those disputes, which I think is not just a little weird. It’s like they never discussed about their career together or made joint decisions about what to do in the future. At least not when the going was good. I guess Hardy had no opinions about their career, or if he did, he always agreed with Roach rather than his partner. Likewise, it seems that Laurel had no qualms about doing whatever he felt right, without consulting Hardy. Yes, Babe was “just” an actor, while Stan was involved in the other aspects of movie making too, but seems to me that it would’ve been all the more important and quite easy to agree on how to proceed together without having one partner constantly arguing with the boss while the other one waited for whatever the outcome each time might be. Not that the news about breakups followed by reconciliations were all bad publicity-wise.

In any case, Stan got fired in 1938, after (almost) finishing Block-Heads. Not so much because of creative differences but either because he had been drinking at work, absent from work, or in too many scandalous headlines with his wife Vera (Illeana), possibly some sort of combination of these and other reasons, or maybe Hal Roach just needed an excuse to get rid of him in order to try something else. Babe of course still had his contract (because they weren’t a team in that sense either) and doesn’t seem to have minded getting a new partner. Or if he ever protested against any of it, I haven’t heard about it. Long story short: Stan and Hal sued each other, Stan eventually got divorced, and Zenobia got made but evidently wasn’t as big a success as had been hoped, so during spring 1939 everything was settled and writing for A Chump at Oxford began. With Harry Langdon in the writing team, as he had been for Block-Heads and would be for The Flying Deuces and Saps at Sea.

Of course it’s all plenty more complicated but my point is that even though Stan could hold a grudge as well as the next person, I very much doubt he was doing so in 1953 because of a movie Babe made with Harry Langdon in 1939 like the trailer for Stan & Ollie suggests. And if the alleged chip on Stan’s shoulder affected the good thing they had going before Zenobia, I’d love to know how. If anything, Zenobia proved that Langdon and Hardy wasn't the new Laurel and Hardy, or else they'd continued working together. Well, maybe the movie will tell how and I’m jumping to conclusions (speculation is fun) but I feel like there’d been more truth in trying to include whatever caused, according to Stan, “personal grievances” between them in 1949 when Babe made a stage tour with, amongst others, John Wayne and then appeared as his sidekick in The Fighting Kentuckian.

Anyhow, the trailer looks better than I expected, and I understand that they want to acknowledge Laurel and Hardy’s movie career together and that there has to be some drama in the movie, I just wish they had found another way to do it. Biopics take liberties but who even wants to draw attention to Zenobia when there are great Laurel and Hardy films to remember? And I don’t just mean Way Out West and The Music Box.

Here’s the highlights of this long and interesting document, which tells Hal Roach’s side of the story and what he thought, at least officially, of Stan and his escapades:

Answering paragraph III of the plaintiffs’ complaint, defendant admits that in the past the said Laurel was an outstanding and successful comedian. Defendant denies that the said plaintiff was the creator of Laurel and Hardy and in this connection alleges that, in truth and in fact, said two players were placed together in acting by defendant studio. Defendant denies that said two players constitute a team and allege the fact to be that the contracts between the defendant Studio and said Laurel and Hardy are, and have been separate and apart, and no provision is made therein for the combination of the two, and that under the contracts attached to plaintiffs’ complaint, defendant has the right to produce photoplays, if desired, with Stan Laurel alone, and without connection with Hardy.

***

In this connection, defendant alleges the fact to be that although the defendant was attempting to locate and talk to the plaintiff LAUREL, that nevertheless when the said Laurel returned to Los Angeles, he refused to talk with or communicate with the defendant herein, and wrongfully and willfully continued to remain away and went again from the City of Los Angeles to Catalina Island, California. Defendant admits that on or about the 12th day of August, 1938, it notified plaintiff that it had terminated and ended said agreements between defendant and plaintiffs and that it would no longer be bound thereby.

***

That since said October 8, 1937, said Stan Laurel on numerous and divers occasions has been intoxicated in public; that he has had public quarrels and contentions; that there have been many public scenes; that the police have been called to his home and to investigate him. That he has carried on continuous public reconciliations and public quarrels, and marriages, and re-marriages, charges and counter-charges with his wife “Illeana” and they have had between them numerous public scenes and disturbances, and that the said Stan Laurel has continued to have quarrels, contentions and disturbances with his former wives and one woman who claims to have been a wife and whom Stan Laurel claims was not a wife. That he has from time to time publicly committed strange and unusual and peculiar acts of various kinds and character. That as a result thereof there was from October 1937, to August 11, 1938, almost continuously a great amount of adverse newspaper and other publicity throughout the United States and foreign countries, all of which was very degrading to Stan Laurel in society, and brought him into and kept him in a public hatred, contempt, scorn and ridicule, and which set forth the said Stan Laurel as ridiculing public morals, decency and conventions. That all of these actions of the said Stan Laurel greatly prejudiced the producer, the defendant, Hal Roach Studios, Inc., and was very prejudicial to the motion picture industry in general.

***

Defendant alleges that on the contrary, the said plaintiffs, and each and both of them, and particularly the said plaintiff STAN LAUREL, acting for himself and for the said plaintiff Stan Laurel Productions, Inc., willfully failed and refused to cooperate. That on many and divers occasions the plaintiff STAN LAUREL arrived at the studio for work in an intoxicated condition; that on many and divers occasions the defendant STAN LAUREL drank while working during the day; that on many and divers occasions Stan Laurel was late for work and left work early; that on many and divers occasions plaintiff Stan Laurel appeared in scenes under the influence of intoxicating liquors. That during the course of a day’s work, on many and divers occasions, said Stan Laurel would delay in appearing for a scene or in assisting or directing the same. That said Stan Laurel would not and did not properly cooperate and assist in the cutting of “Swiss Miss”. That on many and divers occasions the said Stan Laurel, without right, absented himself from the Studio. That said Stan Laurel from time to time made depreciating and belittling remarks about the Studio and the officers thereof, all of which was calculated to, and did, affect the morale of the employees of said Studios. Said Stan Laurel would not cooperate with the director on “Swiss Miss” and would not work with or cooperate with the other employees of the Studio in connection with the making of the picture. That the said Stan Laurel would not cooperate with the Studio in the hiring or employing of the actors and other employees that it desired to use in “Swiss Miss” and “Blockheads”. That the said Stan Laurel would not and did not in any wise cooperate in the completion of said photoplay “Blockheads” and without the consent, and without the knowledge, of the said defendant Studio, this said Stan Laurel, before the completion of the picture “Blockheads” absented himself not only from the Studio, but from the State of California, and failed to return for the completion thereof. Said Stan Laurel has been in the motion picture business and an actor in the making of photo plays for many years, and well knows the great expense, damage and loss that can be and is sustained by a Studio in the holding up in the finishing of production by reason of the absence of one of the necessary performers or other employees. That the said Stan Laurel well knew that he was employed for the purpose of acting in, participating in the writing, and participating in the directing and in the cutting of all of the photo plays to be made under said contract, and of the photoplay “Blockheads”, and knew that his absence during the making of said picture and before the final and entire completion thereof, would necessarily cause great inconvenience, loss and damage to the studio, defendants herein. That during the wrongful absence of said Stan Laurel, the said Studio did not know where he was or when he would return, if ever, or his plans, or what he intended to do, and it was necessary for the Studio to proceed without the said Stan Laurel in acting, writing, directing and cutting of said photoplay “Blockheads”. Said Studio did so proceed to its great loss, damage and injury. Said Stan Laurel also had full knowledge that the said Studio had employed writers for the purpose of writing, under his direction, the script for the next photoplay, “Devil’s Island”, and that the said script was to be completed on or about August 1, 1938. That, notwithstanding said knowledge upon the part of the said plaintiff, said Stan Laurel wrongfully and willfully left the State of California and the Studio of the defendant, and without Laurel and his direction in said writing the said writers were unable to proceed with said script for “Devil’s Island&”, and all to the great loss and damage of the defendant.

Sounds like Stan almost managed to ruin the whole motion picture industry or at least the Roach studios with his behaviour, doesn't it? 😍😁😂❤

Seriously though, if he was drunk during the filming of Block-Heads, it didn't affect his acting a bit, and the best scene in all of Swiss Miss is the one in which Stan tries to get drunk, coincidentally. Also, I don’t think Hal cared about Stan’s marital headlines nearly as much as it seems, they just were convenient for his case. It could actually be argued that he made everything worse by drawing extra attention to them, not to mention how he himself was repeatedly doing the same argument/reconciliation thing with Stan.

#Stan Laurel #Oliver Hardy #Laurel and Hardy #Harry Langdon #Hal Roach #John C. Reilly #Danny Huston #Stan & Ollie #Stan & Ollie the movie #Zenobia #1939 #1930s #movies #other #my gifs

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